thinkwhere

Google has released MapMaker. Now you can fill Google’s databases with information about the world that they do not already have, and for your efforts, you get a map on a website that you cannot download to your computer, or put in your school’s magazine, or make a paper tourist map from, and you would probably get more spam (”targeted advertisements”), all for your hard work!

I’m pretty sure this software was what Michael Smith was talking about last year about India. The main shift, the main point that was missed by that last post by O’Reilly is that no GPS were used, it’s all about local knowledge on top of areal imagery.

So MapMaker, a nice idea, it’s an attempt by them to fill in the gaps of their maps, by getting people to do the work for them. At the moment, it’s mostly open for some small islands, around the world like Cyprus and Antiqua, and larger countries like Pakistan. (edited to separate Pakistan from smaller islands, thanks Golod!)

But, contribute all you like, you will never own your data you make, and will be held responsible if it’s wrong.

You will be stuck with the default road-centred view of the world that Google decides works best (it’s nice cartography, it is just inflexible). No exporting the data we can make, no seeing the map as a non driver may like to look at it, no footpaths, no cyclepaths, no special Greek language map of Northern Cyprus, and no making maps in countries that do not allow it, of course! Sjors thinks that it must have been rushed through as if it must be a mistake that Google is so closed.

However, have a look - it’s nice to be able to keep an eye on an area, moderation works nicely, and feedback about edits is well thought out. There some intelligent feature snapping going on too, and map edits are rendered quite quickly onto a transparent overlay, giving good feedback - but, I always thought that I was doing something for free, for very little reward. Afterall, Google pay Teleatlas and other mapping agencies / companies for their data… soon they may not have to.

Now, this posts title is a bit ungenerous! Google maps are not just web maps - as Nash writes, he’s excited about getting Pakistan on the map. “Imagine being able to access full maps on your cellphone, on an Android application, Location Based Services, local business search”. Unless there are alternatives in these spheres, and not just mapping, Google will dominate.

Of course, OpenStreetMap is an alternative and comparison of choice, with it’s Free and Open Source approach leading to better quality, nicer more flexible maps, and a good active community. With OpenStreetMap, You can download the data and do stuff with it, you can make a tourist map with it, you can put it in your school book, etc etc. Blinkgeo asks “what about openstreetmap?”, and hopes to see Google enabling export of the data. Steve Coast writes some more about mapmaker and openstreetmap. And highlights how Google is competing against the big data providers now.

Perhaps the big G will spark something new and creative in OSM in response? Perhaps mapmakers users will demand more for their work, or better tools? We will wait and see. Perhaps people will be happy spending time for minimal reward on data that will never be theirs?

Perhaps if making a is ok if it’s made fun enough, made into a game? Troq writes that they would love to take part in openstrettmap if there was some kind of a gaming competition around it.

Where 2.0 has started, alas, I’m not attending in person this year, but Nick Black spotted that my image is there instead, on the conference programme!

Big big thanks to Seero.com who are streaming most of the sessions, plus are archiving a lot of them too if you miss them. Also, the irc backchannel is #where2008 on freenode. The current over-used and misused word is “open”. (last year it was “GeoRSS”).

For live blogging, John Mckerrell is doing exhaustive transcribes too.

Things of note so far:

google includes geosearch in it’s API, and tries to kill Mapufacture. People freak out about augmented reality enhanced police states. Dash opens their API, ESRI and google have a “partnership”. This partnership, basically uses google earth and Arc Server may give a push into good open source / Free Web Processing Servers, as more people see the value of real geographical and spatial analysis, and not wanting to pay tens of thousands for a paleo-program and a new server with ridiculous specs for the privilege.

Back from Japan, and warming up for a couple of big posts, I notice from the Telegraph that the Tories want crime maps published to the public (youtube video). Some people might know that in the past, I was working on crime mapping, and crime perceptions hence my interest. Also good to see the release of geospatial data becoming a political issue.

Over in Kyoto, Japan, I spotted a map, published and displayed in the subway station:

and

Which, is the hotspot map (just number of incidences) of one particular type of crime. Perhaps someone could tell me what it is its mapping exactly (robbery / theft from person is my guess) big pic is here. But I was happy to see it there, as it might be an indication that they have my belief that access to accurate information and data about crime would actually reduce the fear of crime, and inform people that the streets are really quite safe and not full of danger.

Back to the UK. The Conservatives “Giving the Public a Crime Map” (pdf) is worth a look. It looks at existing sites, including the quite good site from West Yorkshire Police Authority, BeatCrime.info. As currently, although there is a requirement to communicate to the public, and produce figures, there is no requirement for the police and councils (they are meant to work in partnership with each other) to produce maps, and maps which show crimes at a high level of detail. Also, each partnership seems to be doing their own thing.

They reckon the costs would be quite unbelievably cheap “just £20,000 to cover the website and an official to make sure the figures were accurate and up to date”. Triple that, at least, a one site fits all approach probably will fail, as each authority and division works in a different way, they have different software, servers etc, but they may be hinting at a central website.

For the mapping side of things, the issue of privacy comes up. Nice to see the idea of highlighting a road, or part of a road, instead of randomising a point location (for more sensitive locations).

They also say that they would be able to release the data for third parties to use, hinting that we would be able to make map mashup. But I bet they will say “oh sorry, it’s crown copyright afterall, as we use a geocoder using the postoffice address file”, you cannot use it. Thus making the benefits marginal, and keeping the data centralised and controlled, something the tories criticise the government of doing.

Get ready to be followed and spied upon for creating a free map.

Superintendent Brett Lovegrove Head of Counter Terrorism for the City of London Police at the “Project Griffin Conference” in Edinburgh, talked about “hostile reconnaissance” to help spot potential targets:

“This means noticing people who suddenly start appearing at a café and perhaps draw maps of the surrounding area.

Understandably, this is bad news, as we love going to cafes and making maps! Here’s a photo of us at a Starbucks during Leeds OpenStreetMap mapping weekend:

image copyright kevin whitworth

Kyle Gordon from Openstreetmap has penned an open email in response to Lovegrove’s advice.

We are in danger of being arrested and unfairly held for a 4 weeks (possibly 6 or 7…) under anti-terrorism laws, just by doing our hobby

Was fortunate to be at the launch of Ordnance Survey’s OpenSpace - their slippy mapping API, last Friday. Here are some impressions, and an example for you to play with! My OpenSpace demo allows you to zoom in, out, etc and draw around the generalised buildings and then save the polygon as a GML file. It uses FeatureServer and the built-in vector drawing tools of the OpenLayers/OpenSpace API. Nick from Free-map has a example that loads in GeoRSS feeds.

Yep, currently it is closed alpha, but those who attended didn’t have to sign any NDAs, indeed, the OS took the open and honest approach and even admitted that they were not “going to pretend to now be one of the good guys” as Peter ter Haar, Director of Products said. Peter, I think, before joining the OS, was instrumental in getting Mapguide open sourced with Autodesk and OSGEO, although, this wasn’t mentioned during the day, or on any press releases about OpenSpace. Overall it is reflected of the tone of the day, that there are people doing good stuff, but that the organization has issues, but that these could be changed.

So, it’s taken two years, and a Cabinet report (Power of Information Review) for the Ordnance Survey to release this - but it’s not without it’s limitations. OpenSpace does in their eyes address the OS mandate to maximizing use of geographic information, allowing non-commercial use whilst also providing a way for them to generate some revenue for the future.

Most of the discussion was about the licence and limits. It’s free for “non commerical experimentation” and non-commercial is quite a strict term - no little ad’s, no paypal donate link, nothing. The basis of this is that they don’t want to annoy their partners, and that they want to have an “upgrade path”.

The API is OpenLayers based, with additional goodies such as gazetteer search and a “momentum” drag-and-let-go effect on the map. However, the gazetteer doesn’t do postcodes! Also, it is in OSGB coordinates, so there is also some helper functions for translating to and from lat lon. However, this basic client side conversion can lead to errors, apparently, and in some places they can be out by tens of metres. The OS developers said that if users think that a server side conversion is better, then that could be accommodated.

The coverage is just England, Wales and Scotland (not NI). I asked if the coverage was going to increase, or if other National Mapping Agencies were interested in adding to it, and possibly in the next couple of months, something will be announced. Oh, and no Isle of Man (just like Google, but unlike Openstreetmap), or the Scilly isles.

There was a big discussion of commercial and non commercial use. They said that most NGO’s, charities and small groups would, in the majority of cases be able to use OS maps, because they would be working as agents of other partners that have OS agreements, i.e. local governments. So, in a sense, the types of websites I can see ideally suited for use of OpenSpace, already have access to OS maps.

As you can see from my demo, there are no 1:25,000 maps - (1:25,000 are the same as the paper Explorer maps). The reason why there is none, is that they currently do not offer these to their partners anyhow for use in other mapping systems. Fair enough, but the 1:25,000 would be great to have. The StreetView layer seemed to have been edited for colour. Footpaths are not present, however the generalised buildings are unique.

Licence: Here, they’ve gone out of their way to clarify the position derived data, something that Google and the other web mapping providers haven’t. Basically Google could say “you know all those pins you’ve been putting on our maps? Well, they are ours, and always have been!”. The OS are basically saying, if it’s derived, then it’s ours but we give an permanent licence for you to use it, and also a licence for us, the OS to use it too. If it’s your own data, then it’s not derived, and it’s fully your data. If it’s derived, but is a “severable improvement”, i.e. if it can stand alone from the map, then it’s yours but you grant the OS the licence for them to use it. There was a long (lunch-turning-cold) discussion about derived data, copied data, substitutability, etc… Thus in my example, it’s a non commercial application, it’s most probably derived data, so it belongs to the OS, but you can use it, for non-commerical purposes only.

Limits, currently 30,000 tile hits per 24 hrs, and 1,000 gazetteer hits. It seems very low, and is. It’s for “experimentation” with a “growth path” in mind. I.e. if you want more, or want to make some money, then you gotta pay for it.

Summary: The maps, as we know, are lovely, the interface works well, the licence on derived data is at least clearly defined, but the limits and non commerical-ness will put off small websites. It’s limited to the UK only (in coverage) so no global / European use (yet?), NGO’s and Charities already can get OS data without going down a “growth path”. I find it hard to think who could be using this, but think it’s a good start - they make no bones about being the Bad Guys, but at least the bad guys want to bring something to the party.

The Mayor of Brighton toasted the completion of the map of Openstreetmap, alongside Mikel, Chris Corbin, the Fire Brigade Commander, myself and about twenty others. It marked the successful completion of the Openstreetmap map for Brighton and Hove.

With perfect timing, it also saw at the same event, the launch of a new book, the first commercially published book (for sale) with Creative-Commons licensed, Openstreetmap maps in the back!

The book is entitled, “The Deckchair Guide to Brighton and Hove” by Queenspark Books. In conversation with the QueenSpark book folk there, they said that the cost of other maps meant that they would have not been able to include good street maps in there, then along came Openstreetmap, and they were able to include (full colour) streetmaps.

Next thing, would be a nice way to produce a list of street names, points of interest to help make an index/gazetter (i.e. South Street, Page 233, col2, row D), if more people were wanting to include a collection of free, high quality maps in their books.

It’s a great use of Openstreetmap data, and something that can be championed for other areas! As Mikel says, holding a “1.0″ completion event is a great way to increase visibility, and encourage discussion of *uses* of the map with the community.

The other first was the public unveiling of a locative Locomatrix Fruit Chaser game (PacMan in other words) for mobile phone and gps. Richard Vahrman took us around the block in the search of fruit! The idea is to get kids out and about running around. Although there were not enough for teams, the game is meant to be played with teams, and can also be played over other geographic areas, so people running around in San Francisco, and Brighton, hunting for the same fruit. It also comes with an api so its easy to make your own games! Something to looks out for. (It was my first time playing a locative game)

So, full kudos to Mikel and Chris and others who mapped Brighton, and great news that people are using it, and getting engaged with it, lets look forward to seeing more Mayors toasting more completed towns throughout the world!

If web 2.0 was all about users generating content, and folksonomies, then Openstreetmap would fit very snugly into web 2.0, just like Wikipedia. But it’s much more, and I want to help more people to see the potential.

It’s web 3.0, where the view and interface becomes less important, and the data and the interpretation becomes central.

OSM is different from Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s data and the data’s interpretation is one-to-one. One view of the data, you edit the page, and it’s shown on that page. OSM is different, you can edit the data for an area, and different renderers, interpretators can show (or not show) that in different ways.

This thinking was inspired by recent mailing list discussions [here and here] about an “edit war” over placenames in Northern Cyprus, and by some talks at BarCamp Leeds. I won’t go into the details, but will quote (very heavily edited) some old OSM thinking here:

OSM should present a snapshot of the state of play at the time a mapper maps an area… After all, OSM is used is a navigational aid.

OSM is a navigational aid rather than a history book.

Whoever tags a place first gets to keep their name in first place.

Are there any lessons, learnt from wikipedia?

OSM is for english speakers.

The future will see me hosting the map itself in a non editable form

and some future thinking ideas:

OSM should accurately represent all legitimate points of view. While at the same time, fairly and without provocation.

isn’t the real issue that there’s really no “fundamental truth”.

Does osm have the ability to present multiple views of the database, for a given region? rather than try and put all the (variant, disputed) data in one place, perhaps the data should be (effectively) put in two (or more) places/views, and when such a region is requested, the user should be forced to choose which view of the region they wish to see.

OSM is a break with the past. There is the possibility to somehow represent all points of view.

the decision needs to lie with the renderer (or other user) and not with the mapper - what we currently see is mappers trying to force their world view onto the renderer (or user), instead of allowing him to chose; this is wrong.

Editing OSM is at the moment, mainly done using a google maps model of mapping. Linear editing, change something using the editor, and it’s reflected on the Map.

Editing OSM with web 3.0 model. Multiple possible paths, change something using the editor, and it may or may not be reflected on multiple different Maps, according to the interpretation / rendering rules.

So some notes for a manifesto:

• One to Many - One database - Multiple views.
• Tagging system accommodates multiple representation.
• Whoever renders (interprets) the data (map) should have the say on what is rendered.
• Encouragement of alternative views, renderers, servers. We need more custom map servers. This is not forking, as it’s the same underlying database, but the interpretation is different. Here’s a real example: Cycle Map for OSM: http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/osm/
• Maps are representation of reality. Community should debate folksonomy, correct tagging procedures as before, allowing for alternate representations of the same object, as before.
• Example, an Ethical OSM map, showing recycling, cyclepaths, and names of buildings, business according to their ethical behaviour.
• Example, Roman OSM map, showing places and roads, ruins, temples, that only existed during Roman times.
• Example, a insert-country-here OSM map, showing boundaries and placenames that the Country’s administration consider authoritative.
• Example, already up and running, the Cycle Map, renders the data for cyclists, and publishes guidelines for contributors, on how to edit OSM so it will show up on their Cycle Map

Note, I have not touched on how, technically, these things can be solved (the threads linked to above have some suggestions) but they are something to reach for.

For one, I welcome more edit wars - they shake up old “OSM as a wiki” thinking, and I welcome more servers showing different views, as a starting point.

Chris has made a transparent openstreetmap layer, utilizing tilecache and mapnik configured for transparencies

with a neat overlay opacity control too.

example with landsat

example with yahoo images

This is the fourth look at the current state of j2me mobile phone mapping with gps focusing at applications with openstreetmap. We are seeing the development of new mobile applications, because now there is data and it is free, and available. A lot of this would be covered by the presentation I made at the State Of The Map Conference, Manchester July 2007, you can see my slides and the recorded audio too.

Viewing Recording Editing Other Stuff

Trekbuddy : Talked about this in an earlier post, and it’s going from strength to strength, The next version will have routing based on gpx, rte, rtept, wpt - so one to look out for. Also, Tom Higginson’s application enabling you to easily create a TrekBuddy map, allows mapnik and osmarenderer.

J2memap : I finally got this working, but requires a hack to get osm on there. However, j2memap does provide a library, so you can built an application that uses osm images, and the j2me engine. Quite smart. Network costs are for me, the main reason why I don’t use this. Zooming in and out of the map takes up far too much money. (you can disable the network access, but then you don’t get any maps).

GpsMid : Is a really cool opensource application for use with openstreetmap data. Talked about this before. What this does is read a downloaded .osm file and packages it into a precompiled midlet for the phone. It compresses 3mb osm into 244k midlet, code and data! It works really smoothly, zooming and connecting with the gps to get your position. It displays the streetnames, and POI /Nodes, and because it’s vector, you can search the data for names and it will zoom in to that area, and give a line from where you are to where it is. It is open source, and needs developers! I’d like to see nice gps recording, and overlays of tracks, or the loading of gps traces from the server. or the correction of road names instantly… (more on this later)

Getting a GpsMid midlet is reasonably straightforward too.

java -jar Osm2GpsMid-0.2.29.jar manc.osm propertiesfile

propertiesfile
bundle.name = manc
region.1.lat.min = 53.326
region.1.lat.max = 53.626
region.1.lon.min = -2.592
region.1.lon.max = -2.052

you can have it churn over the huge planet.osm or use JOSM to get a smaller .osm file.

Vgps - Vietnamese GPS : Similar to GpsMid, but you gotta pay them and give them the osm to compile the midlet. However, the rendering looks nicer, and there are one way arrows, etc. Nice search and waypoints too. Uses gps to get location. Worth a look. You can download a load of applications for free from their site, including Cambridge and London. Couldn’t get it to work on my Nokia 6230i - but have a look to see what people are doing with osm data.

Mobile Trails Explorer : Briefly mentionned in an earlier post, I really like MTE. It’s the other open source project, and one where openstreetmap can really lend itself to. It basically records and displays tracks (both before and after). I’ve written some code to import a gpx track and then you can display as a greyed out ghost track. The good thing for openstreetmap is that this is useful when keeping track of whats already been mapped. and it would be a short step to download and import traces from the osm api too. Again, it needs you. would love to see some osm background map. They have a google groups discussion list.

Whereami: By Adam Boardman. This is a great S90 and S60 Mobile application using Openstreetmap Data.

This actually downloads osm data from the server, and renders it on the fly. It keeps areas in a cache, so if you got to the same area, it doesn’t have to download the same data. You can zoom in and search and annotate things too. Great stuff! Haven’t got a link to this yet, but will update.

Summary:

So we are seeing openstreetmap data availability increasing the development of mobile applications. Proof indeed of the argument that National Mapping Agencies keeping hold of the nations data stifles and stunts good development and enterprise. Now people, are using osm data, as that’s what is available, and are doing the work with that.

We also had quite a lot of discussion about the type of mobile applications and what we want. At the moment, we are creating the data from scratch, but soon we will be editing and annotating existing data, should our tools reflect this change?

I record tracks on the phone and then use my desktop to correct and edit openstreetmap data, add tags, straighten out the wobbly roads etc. I also use the phone is display map of where I am or want to go to.

I would like to be able to edit names, add in points of interest, maybe not edit the geometries of roads on the phone, but add in tags, maybe flag a road up that’s wrong. I want to see the tracks being made on top of existing osm data, so we can check for accuracy.

In the future, our phones will be more powerful, adding in photos, voice, etc, we can have quite a powerful application. We also need to make it simple enough for my mum to use!

As mentionned last post, Barry Crabtree presented some marvellous things. Here’s one of them

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8DkfSfI6tA]

Keep your eyes peeled:
http://www.youtube.com/dotbaz