Slashgeo

Steve Coast writes "OpenStreetMap is an effort to create free maps of the world, mainly in areas like Europe where national mapping agencies have a monopoly on mapping data. The maps are created by annotating GPS traces or using photography. There is an active mailing list and wiki as well as a ever-growing code base and coders hacking away. We're also trying to raise a little money by selling some stunning posters."

The Into The Pudding blog discuss why isn’t collaborative geodata a big deal already? From the introduction: "So if by Weber’s criteria geospatial data has a high chance for a true architecture of participation to form around, then why don’t we see more collaboratively built maps? Why do governments and commercial ventures dominate the landscape of geospatial data? Though there are several emerging examples, shouldn’t they be a bigger deal?" They are multiple projects on data collaboration, but Chris Holmes makes good points. The OpenStreetMap project (working on Bath right now) is one good example, wikimapia is another (Chris lists more examples).

Two geoblogs offers several links on the floods in the U.K, first, on the Brain Off blog and then two entries from Mapperz. From the Brain Off: " This thread about UK flood mapping on the OpenStreetMap mailing list demonstrates that OpenStreetMap is one of the best angles to approach mapping for disaster response. [...] The floods again highlight issues with closed government data. The Environment Agency has come under criticism for restricting use of flooding data after the floods last month in the North." See also related stories.

I believe we can't overestimate the long-term positive impact of the OpenStreetMap project. They recently announced their first "complete" country available, the Netherlands. Why the Netherlands? Because they previously received money to make it a reality. I took a look at the state of my own city in OSM and I've been surprised at how fast data is being contributed by citizens, this is great news for freedom. See related stories below.

The Brain Off blog offers a nice entry on discussing links between a United Nations's FAO workshop, the OSGeo's GeoNetwork open source software and OpenStreetMap. Overall, an informative read. From the entry: "And in its way, an OSGeo conference at the FAO (not an uncontroversial agency anyway) is a bit subversive. Despite official support from high levels of the UN for open source software in development, the UN rarely eats its own dog food. [...] Next, Nicolas Chavent from the UN Joint Logistics Centre talked about the UN Spatial Data Infrastructure for Transport — an infrastructure and policy regime for sharing transport data. Particularly the ontology they’ve been working on to harmonize the innumerable schema in use around the world." See also related links below.

Here's a wrap-up of last month's geonews regarding OpenStreetMap. First is a long discussion on the licence attributed to data contributed to the OpenStreetMap project, an exert: "Many of the problems arise because Creative Commons (the “CC” of our licence), as the name suggests, is largely concerned with “creative works” - music, literature, art, and so on. OpenStreetMap, on the other hand, produces data: a factual, uncontroversial recording of the world around us. [...] In the [Science Commons initiative] protocol, Creative Commons restates the problem that copyright simply does not apply universally to factual information." Then there's an update on Nestoria, the first commercial application now using exclusively OSM data. We also have Google's Ed Parsons discussing the differences between data in Google Maps and OpenStreetMap. Other OSM entries include a short discussion on the community surrounding OSM vs "old timers", a mention of OSM during the KDE 4 keynote, a visual comparison of Google data vs OSM + OpenAerialMap data over China, a short account of using JOSM, the advanced OpenStreetMap editor, and finally, the announcement of this year's State of the Map 2008 conference will be held in Ireland. See also the numerous related stories below (more if you search the Slashgeo archives). On a personal note, I used to say about OSM that data is particularly useful in Europe, but not in North America yet... after a quick peak today at the status of OSM completion in NA, I admit I'm impressed, data has been added very rapidly and this is obviously great news for public domain data.

Nick Black writes "The call for papers The 2nd OpenStreetMap Conference, The StateoftheMap 2008 is now open. We’re inviting papers and demonstrations from anyone who contributes to OpenStreetMap or uses OpenStreetMap or other open geodata. Would you like to demonstrate uses of OSM data or run a Tricks and Tips session? Maybe you’ve got the best routing engine around and your itching to show it off? Is tagging driving you crazy? There are a few different ways you can participate in the State of the Map 2008 — giving a talk, holding a workshop or giving a lightning talk.

For more information, check out the SOTM site or email registration@stateofthemap.org." Related stories copied below.

Nick writes "CloudMade announced details of their OpenStreetMap Grants scheme yesterday. The idea is simple — anyone can apply for grants of £100 — £1000+ to support useful, interesting or innovative work around OpenStreetMap. This could be anything from squashing OSM’s 10 most annoying bugs to mapping an entire city to building an OSM community from scratch to writing a new mapping client. The grants scheme is open to anyone regardless of location — all ideas are considered and the chosen entries will be announced on CloudMade's blog." Recent OSM related stories copied below, but a lot more with a search.