[OSM-talk] 'Mashups' using OSM

Dan Karran dan at karran.net
Wed Jun 7 12:11:17 BST 2006


On 6/7/06, Nick Whitelegg <Nick.Whitelegg at solent.ac.uk> wrote:

> Was wondering what the prevailing thought on 'mash up' applications using
> OSM was. To give an example: for Freemap I would like to use a planet.osm
> derived OSM map, displayed with OpenLayers, as the background and then
> allow users (walkers, cyclists) to annotate the map with path blockages,
> interesting views, links to photos, etc. These annotations could be either
> public or private (requiring a login to be visible, e.g. something only
> relevant to members of a club). Annotations would come with descriptions.

I've had a similar idea on my mind for a while too, but I don't think
the base data is quite up to it yet in the area I'm interested in. I'm
very excited though about the recent talk of OpenLayers, which would
be excellent for basis of a user interface.

> The question I have is - where should those annotations be stored? In view
> of the (sensible) focus on the OSM server itself for editing rather than
> retrieval, it's my view that individual 'mashup' sites would store these
> annotations in their own databases, not in OSM. Any comments on this?

I think everything should be stored locally to the individual
projects. Having said that, I think there will be a certain amount of
data which could be pushed back into OSM. In my case, points of
interest would be some of those things that would benefit OSM as a
whole. Annotations on the other hand would only be relevant to my
individual project. There are potential overlaps though. Say if
somebody looks on your site for a particular trail but can't find it,
should you let them enter it there or send them over to OSM to put it
in?


Dan

-- 
Dan Karran
dan at karran.net
www.dankarran.com




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