[Openstreetmap] Introduction

Jono Bacon jono at jonobacon.org
Tue Oct 5 04:18:46 BST 2004


Hi all,

I thought I would sign upo to this list as I think this is a really 
great project. I just ordered my TrackNav GPS unit that will be here on 
thursday, and I am really keen to see this project succeed. I am afraid 
that I cannot really lend a hand with any coding (unless its some 
PHP/MySQL stuff), but I am certainly keen to get out there and 
contribute some data to the maps.

I recently blogged about this at 
http://www.jonobacon.org/viewcomments.php?id=392 and it pretty much 
summarises a lot what I wanted to say about the project. Here is a copy 
of the text below:

------
Well, I got my patched Orinoco driver 
<http://airsnort.shmoo.com/orinocoinfo.html> working, and I also got 
Kismet <http://www.kismetwireless.net/> working and so it outputs what 
it finds by speaking to me with the Festival speech synthesis system 
<http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/>. It is pretty damn good – 
I still have no idea how to use it to its fullest potential, but it is 
fun to play with. I can’t wait to get the GPS now.

Speaking of GPS, I was browsing around the net and stumbled across a 
project called OpenStreetmap <http://www.openstreetmap.org/>. This 
project seeks to create a completely free and open set of street maps 
that will solve the problems that Europeans face with non-free and 
non-editable maps. This is not so much of a problem for our American 
friends as they have access to a bunch of free maps that can be 
downloaded, but even then, these maps are not free as in speech. Rather 
annoyingly, one of the chaps behind the project talked about this at 
EuroFoo when I was there, but I evidently missed it. Damn.

I find this project interesting for a number of reasons:

    * *We need free maps* - firstly, we need free street maps. We need
      maps that can be loaded into free software that can be used to
      indicate where we are and plan routes.
    * *We need maps that have open data* - many of the current maps we
      have access to are simply huge images with little useful data.
      With an open map, you ideally want to have each place and location
      stored in some form of open and accessible data format that can
      then be used in other applications. If you made this data
      available with web services for example, a stack of useful
      information could be available online.
    * *We need maps that represent current data* - if I go onto the M6
      and there are queues between J6 and J8, I should really see this
      when I look at the map. Likewise, when I am driving around a town,
      I should ideally know where the car parks are and even how much
      the fees are. If you take it much further and to a point where we
      have countrywide wireless net access, you should be able to click
      on something and access current information or a website about the
      resource.

Now, this is all a pipedream in my head after seeing the site, and to be 
honest, a lot of this is /way/ off yet. I think that the key in making 
this work is by creating tools that are so easy to use and so 
accessible, anyone can contribute to the project. If this project 
involves people downloading complex software, taking a class in GPS 
positioning and spending hours of their life writing repetitive data, 
the project will never catch on – in any case, very few people have GPS 
units anyway. I think the key is in requiring as little information from 
general users as possible and putting the software in the hands of 
everyone (including those with no GPS units) and everything (apart from 
courgettes, they are shit). A few ideas:

    * *Make it simple* - the GPS software really needs to automatically
      indicate when information is needed from the user. As an example,
      if the user is driving along a road and takes a sharp left turn,
      this could possibly indicate that a new street has started. In
      this case, the startpoint right through to the endpoint should be
      logged and flagged up as needing a street name. Generating the
      road map should not be a problem as you can just turn on the
      receiver and it will track wherever you are driving to, but these
      changes in direction should automatically log that a new place
      name is needed. This then gives those with a knowledge of the
      local area and no GPS unit the opportunity to go online and add
      the place name in some kind of map based Wiki.
    * *Resources should be defined and then placed* - it would be useful
      if Joe Bloggs goes online, sees a couple of street names in his
      area and then knows there is a car park near by. He then has a
      stab at locating the car park by adding it to the map by clicking
      in the general direction, but it is flagged as potentially not
      accurate. When someone with a GPS unit is roaming in the area, the
      contributor could then drive into the car park, select it from the
      map Wiki and add the coordinates.
    * *Voice recognition would be useful* - obviously voice recognition
      is not necessarily as accurate as we would like, but it could be
      used to get a quick approximation of a street that could be fixed
      later. This would allow roamers to add data hands free – a key
      requirement in the UK where handling any kind of device while
      driving is an offence.
    * *Make available capturing software on everything* - it is no use
      if the only way to capture GPS data for OpenStreetmap is by having
      a laptop and GPS unit. There needs to be capturing software
      available for new phones with GPS facilities, PDAs, actual GPS
      receivers and more. This will make it more accessible to most
      people – if someone can sit on the bus to work and contribute to
      the project without looking like a dork, this would be useful.

I think the main point is that GPS roamers and web contributors will 
need to have different interfaces that are separated in usability and 
ease to facilitate these different users. Web contributors should not 
need to know about long/lat coordinates – they can probably add place 
names due to their general knowledge of the area If the system is easy 
to use, I am sure that walkers, ramblers, hikers, explorers and others 
could potentially contribute to the project, particularly if they can 
add meta-data that is useful to /their/ hobby too (such as ramblers 
rests, points of interest etc). Imagine the potential – you could even 
indicate wireless hotspots that people are increasingly leaving open to 
allow you to log on when needed. Cool.
------

What are the general plans for making collecting data and modifying data 
as easy as possible?

Cheers,

Jono

-- 
Jono Bacon - http://www.jonobacon.org/
Writer / Journalist / Consultant / Developer





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