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Dan Karran

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OSM Incentives

In the past few days I've spent at least four hours out walking around the city trying to map as many streets as possible in the area in live in - Stuttgart West. It's great to get out there - even if it does start raining - and explore the area around me. Once the spring and summer arrive, I'll start cycling around with my GPS and my camera as well. Exploration, photography, geography and keeping fit, all in one.

If you've not yet tried OpenStreetMap, what are you waiting for? Why not get out and explore your surroundings. Careful though, it's addictive!

Posted in , at 12:29 PM on Thursday 23 March 2006 | Comments (0)
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Getting back to open source mapping

OpenStreetMap logoSince my initial contributions to the OpenStreetMap project back in January I haven't added much more data to the system. Having no access to a car at the moment, I've not been able to get out and about exploring the area around Stuttgart and take tracklogs as I go. That, and when I was using the OSM site back in January, it had become incredibly slow as the size of the project grew so quickly.

Despite that, a number things have happened recently that have really energised me and encouraged me to get back into the community to create geodata:

  • Last week I recieved an email from someone planning on doing a Masters dissertation on the OpenStreetMap project. What's more, he's from the Isle of Man, and doing the same course that I did last year.

  • A little while ago, I managed to get another person from the Isle of Man involved in the project. He's now going out with his GPS, cycling around Port St Mary and then adding his tracks to OSM.

  • There's a workshop being planned on the Isle of Wight in May at which there's a group of people (who I will join, if I can get there for the weekend) that have a goal of mapping the whole of the island on OpenStreetMap.

  • This last weekend, one of the OpenStreetMappers gave me the incentive to classify the data I'm inputting and have already input. He came up with a XSL stylesheet that transforms the raw geodata from the OSM API into an attractive SVG image (sorry to use so many TLAs) that can then be manipulated in other applications. It's the first time I've seen my data visualised in any sort of flexible way, and most importantly the first time it's hit me just how important it is to tag the data (with road names, types, etc) as you put it into the system. Without seeing the effect of your tags, there's no incentive to tag it.

  • I tried out the desktop based JOSM editor that lets me edit everything locally and upload any changes - including the ability to tag everything. It's a shame I can only use it on a PC though, so I can only use it after work before going home to my iBook.

  • The site itself is now running at an acceptable speed again, so there's not too much delay when adding data.

  • Right now there is a very important discussion going on in the mailing lists about the type of license that OpenStreetMap data should be released under, what people should be allowed to do with it, and how they should be able to use it. It's great to read so many people's opinions on the topic, especially as none of the existing open source licences really cater for the needs of open geodata. It also demonstrates just how active and involved the community is.

All of this, along with a bout of nicer weather here in Stuttgart (until yesterday) has made me get my GPS out again and start mapping some of the streets of Stuttgart. I'm thinking small streets that I can walk through and explore instead of roads that, in order to map, I'd need to drive along.

Posted in at 11:25 AM on Wednesday 22 March 2006 | Comments (1)
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Where to print photos online in Germany?

When I was putting up some photos in my room recently, I realised that I didn't have prints of many recents photos that I've taken. When I was in the UK I tended to use Photobox for printing my shots (and still do when I need to print shots to send to people), but for me to order from a British company and pay higher postage costs to get it delivered to me in Germany seems crazy, when I can presumably do it all through a German company for less money.

A quick Google search tonight for 'foto drucken' (photo printing) came back with a list of a couple of different sites that looked to be useful: Bildpartner, Pixaco and Foto.com. My problem is that I don't know how reliable any of them are. To me, the look of a site gives me an initial impression of the quality of the service and I don't look favourably on sites like Foto.com that don't look right in my Safari browser.

For reference, I'm going to compare pricing of the different sites below.

Site 7x5"
(18x12.5cm)		 10x8"
(25x20cm)		 A4
(30x20cm)		 Postage to
Germany
Bildpartner €0.29 €1.29 €2.65
Pixaco €0.16 €0.58 €2.85
Foto.com €0.18 €0.50 €0.50 €2.49
Photobox Ireland €0.29 €2.99 €3.65 €2.50

It seems like I've been paying too much in recent years for printing my photos at Photobox. Out of the others, Foto.com comes top pricewise, but if anybody has experience of any of the companies, please leave a comment to let me know. In the meantime, I should just try sending some photos to be printed at Foto.com and see how well they come out.

Posted in at 12:31 AM on Sunday 19 March 2006 | Comments (2)
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Geo bits at CeBIT

A few days have passed since returning from my weekend visit to Hannover and CeBIT, and I'm nearing recovery from the night-travel induced sleep deprivation over the two days. It was a good trip, if only to learn how not to spend the day at large fairs - and that a day probably isn't long enough.

I was visiting the fair with a colleague, who, like me, was hoping to see all the new gadgets that had been hyped in the run up the event. What we didn't realise is that visiting a fair requires some planning before the event to make sure you can fit in the things you want to see as well as a good selection of the other stands. We missed out on a big chunk of the stuff we wanted to see having lingered for too long in the other sections. Seeing everything on display is not an easy task in an area that's almost half a million square metres in size, and it's unbelievably easy to get sucked in to the stands as you go along.

Personally, I was amazed at the amount of geo-related goods and services that were being exhibited - from data providers such as Navteq and Teleatlas, through handheld GPS, mobile phone integrated GPS navigation systems, in-car navigation systems like TomTom (this was probably the biggest share of goods, including many models from China hoping to take a chunk of the market) and a variety of other things. There was also a lot of information from government entities, from both regional and national mapping authorities in Germany and from other European countries. At some point I will attempt to wade through the German literature and find out what's going on in the geospatial world here in Germany.

Perhaps I'll write more about some of the exhibits as and when I get a chance, but for now, check out some of the CeBIT photos from PocketGPSWorld.com.

Posted in at 9:37 PM on Wednesday 15 March 2006 | Comments (0)
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Gmail logging chat... remotely

I recently gained access to some new features in Gmail that I didn't have available to me before - because I was British.

Now that I claim to American, I can access new features in Gmail such as integrated chat (Google Talk), and even a Delete button. If you're currently set to use Gmail in British English you're probably also missing out on these new features. Set your language to American English and magically they'll appear.

As nicely implemented as the integrated chat is, I found that I would often leave a Gmail window open at work whilst I was out of the office. By doing that, it would accept incoming messages for me before they could reach me at home or on my laptop, meaning that I may not see messages for a day (or actually, in this case, a whole week whilst I was in Canada). Because of that, and my tendancy to carelessly leave various copies of Gmail open, I decided to switch the feature off.

One of the things about the integrated chat is that it logs the messages you send and receive through it, allowing you to search it at a later date. If I was using the integrated client, that would be a very handy feature, an extension of my memory, as Gmail already is (and as del.icio.us is).

What I didn't realise - until today - is that messages are still logged in my Gmail even if I use a separate Jabber client (like Gaim, for example). In my Gmail. That's sort of worrying that this remote service is sitting there, unbeknownst to me, recording my conversations. Admittedly, it is very useful, but it certainly shouldn't do it by default.

Posted in at 8:56 PM on Wednesday 15 March 2006 | Comments (5)
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Introducing umlauts

When reading an article about Google Earth in Technology Review last month, I came across a new word: co-ordinates.

Obviously being a geographer, that word is not actually a new one to me, but rather a presentation of it that I don't recall ever seeing before. The word is often written as co-ordinates or coordinates, but this time it was written with an umlaut (if that's the English word for two dots hovering over a letter): coördinates. Umlauts are something I see regularly with living in Germany, but not something I would expect to see decorating English words on which I've not previously seen an umlaut sitting.

At the time of reading the article, it puzzled me for a little while, but a transatlantic plane ride quickly helped the puzzling disappear from my mind. On my way back from CeBIT this evening, a friend passed me The New Yorker to help keep me entertained on the journey. To my surprise, once again, I came across this apparent trend in a short column about drinking Tab cola. This time it was with re-engineering (or reengineering), becoming reëngineering.

Has the adding of umlauts to English words been introduced as the new American English way to emphasise the pronunciation of words in which two letters sit together but don't work in the standard way? Is it becoming the replacement for the hyphen in British English, which in the past seems to have largely been omitted from words used commonly in the American lexicon?

Posted in at 11:26 PM on Sunday 12 March 2006 | Comments (4)
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CeBIT

This weekend I am travelling up to Hannover to visit the CeBIT - the biggest technology show in the world. Despite the couple of open source conferences I've been to in the past months (OSCMS and FOSDEM), I've not been to a technology expo for a long time. The last one I went to must have been over ten years ago, when I managed to convince my parents to take me to a MacExpo when we were visiting London at one point.

I'm really looking forward to seeing all the new gadgets - and hoping I don't come back having bought anything I don't need. What I'm not looking forward to is the seven hour train ride through the night to get there, leaving here (Stuttgart) at 3am.

Posted in at 1:06 AM on Friday 10 March 2006 | Comments (1)
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Jeeves Mapped Europe for Ask.com

Before Jeeves was given the boot retired after ten years of service, it seems he was given the task of travelling Europe for Ask.com's next big offering, Ask.com Maps and Directions.

Despite the default view of Ask.com Maps being the typical America-centric view of the world, they appear to be the first new AJAX-y style mapping provider to cover Europe in any detail. They give road maps for all of the European Union countries, plus a few others, including Moscow. In addition, they give much higher resolution aerial photos for Stuttgart and probably for other cities as well, though I must admit I didn't check. They even have road data for the Isle of Man, but sadly no higher resolution aerial imagery of the area.

It's all much better than Microsoft's poor geodata offering and Google's lack of European data outside of the UK and the Torino area of Italy.

One area that definately needs work in the new Ask.com Maps service is the search, which seems patchy at best when looking for places outside of the US.

Oh, and it's not the fastest of services either, but for now I'm happy to put up with that in return for the vast improvement they have in geodata over the other providers. If the ability to link in to the service was simplified, I'd be happier too. And I'd be bowled over if they produced an API for their service.

Posted in at 11:44 PM on Monday 6 March 2006 | Comments (1)
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Wann kommt DVB-T in Stuttgart?

Miglia MiniTVI became the excited owner of a Miglia TVMini today. It's a USB stick that lets you watch digital terrestrial television (DVB-T) on your computer either through your existing antenna or through the little portable one that comes with it. Or at least that is the theory.

DVB-T Coverage around Baden-WürttembergThinking I was going to be able to come home from work and watch some television, you can probably imagine my disappointment when it couldn't locate any channels. Firing up the internet to confirm that DVB was actually being broadcast across Germany as I had originally been led to believe, I discovered that Stuttgart would not in fact be covered until some time before the 2006 World Cup, but under no fixed schedule.

Baden-Württemberg seems to be quite slow on the uptake of the technology, perhaps because of the rugged nature of the area and difficulty in providing a suitable coverage. SWR, the regional television provider admits this could prolong the rollout.

Posted in at 8:02 PM on Friday 3 March 2006 | Comments (3)
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