OpenStreetMap Blog

Agreed. For example Pokemon GO uses it - which is why there was a large influx of new users, prompting the following guidelines page: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2016/12/30/tips-pokemon-go/

Great question. It's a combination of gps data[1] and a lot of manual work. Mapbox for one has strong data teams running mapping initiatives[2]. [1] https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2013/04/12/bulk-gpx-track-data/ [2] https://github.com/mapbox/mapping/wiki

Does this use the new OSM data model? https://media.jochentopf.com/media/2022-08-15-study-evolution-of-the-o… https://github.com/osmlab/osm-data-model https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2023/01/04/reminder-call-for-feedback-o… Resolving the coordinates to node references in current data model is such a nuisance as it's slow and requires lots of RAM.

This comment is a reminder that OSM Vector Tiles is sponsored work. It is exciting to see the deployment of it — congrats to the team! If you find value in it, consider donating any amount to the OpenStreetMap Foundation. https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2024/02/11/2024-announcing-the-year-of-…

Reminds me of the 100 millionth OpenStreetMap changeset (commit). A few people, myself included, were casually trying for it but in the end it went to someone who wasn't trying and just busy mapping Africa! Much more wholesome, seeing it with hindsight. This person was also previously nominated for an OSM award. I guess it helps that openstreetmap doesn't really allow for creating crap, because it's all live in production, and that's how the Nth commit is way more likely to be someone's random whim? Either way, a fun achievement for Github :) In case anyone cares to read more about the OSM milestone, the official blog entry: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2021/02/25/100-million-edits-to-openstr… My write-up of changeset activity around the event: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/LucGommans/diary/395954

I wanted to know how it's handled on OpenStreetMap, and here's how [1], on a first of April anyway. If someone knows more on this, don't hesitate to share :-) [1] https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2017/03/31/osm-plate-tectonics/

Traces uploaded to OpenStreetMap https://www.openstreetmap.org/traces can be downloaded on https://planet.openstreetmap.org/gps/ The page hasn't been updated since 2013 but still, it's gigabytes of data. (Update: 848,000 files based on the annoucement https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2013/04/12/bulk-gpx-track-data/) https://community.openstreetmap.org/ is the forum to ask where newer data is. I remember a technical discussion by the system administrators about backup page for traces so the full data must be available somewhere.

In 2007, there was https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2007/07/04/and-donate-entire-netherland… AND donate entire Netherlands to OpenStreetMap “Automotive Navigation Data” (AND) [since renamed GeoJunxion] is a leading provider of location, routing, mapping and address management are donating a street network of the entire Netherlands. Yes, an entire country. A tiny part of the globe, but I think under a better license because, IMO, 100% compatibility with OpenStreetMap is very important.

They also "forget" attribution: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2012/03/08/welcome-apple/

I think those are the important bits: > The Engineering Working Group (EWG) of the OSMF has “commissioned” (I think that’s OSMF language for paid) a longstanding proponent of rules and complexity to, uh, investigate how to add rules and complexity to OSM. > [...] > Let us pray that the EWG is just throwing Jochen a bone to go play in the corner and stop annoying the grownups. It's a "response" to https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2022/06/02/announcement-data-model-stud…

There was a notable example a few years ago. https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2018/08/30/osm-condemns-vandalism/ OSM had the vandalism removed in a couple hours. A few weeks later, the QA mistakenly let the vandalism through and it wasn't corrected until it got quite a lot of attention.

Examples, please. There is bad info here and there, but it's minority (if you want 100% accuracy it's delusional, even Google Maps has a ton of crap, starting from skylights that AI recognized as buildings [3] to businesses you can't even tell they exist). Also, for a long time now each changeset can be discussed. [1] I have a hunch you may be from a country where the community has not took up too much [2]. These tend to have more dubious data. [1] https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2014/11/02/introducing-changeset-discus… [2] https://osmstats.neis-one.org/?item=countries [3] https://goo.gl/maps/knpT8eRR4YhB6Sm86 - look at the shopping mall in satellite and map view

The trouble is, the documentation is just wrong - all the official documentation says that OSM is in WGS-84. When I realised that this couldn't actually work due to plate tectonics and tried to figure out what they were actually doing, all I found was an April fool's joke from a couple of years ago: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2017/03/31/osm-plate-tectonics/

They did (partially) use OpenStreetMap at the start of their mapping efforts: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2012/10/02/apple-maps/ . No idea what their current involvement is though.

* http://www.weeklyosm.eu/ * http://www.openstreetmap.org/help * Tips for new (Pokemon Go) mappers: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2016/12/30/tips-pokemon-go/

OpenStreetMap driverless cars: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2016/04/01/osm-driverless-cars/

Does that "build-upon" clause also apply for the case where a provider is mixing OSM data with other third-party licensed map data ? For example, it is mentioned/known that Apple makes some use of OSM data[1] to improve their maps in some places. Are they then legally obliged to release the full data behind their maps for those regions? If so, that's very nice but I am not sure that's what is actually happening: the third-party source whom they are licensing data from is unlikely to be happy with a scenario where their data ends up in the public domain as this considerably reduces the commercial value of their map data. [1] - https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2012/10/02/apple-maps/

The iD editor is really slick. Glad to see this is becoming the default editor on openstreetmap.org. It deserves it. For the impatient, here is what it looks like: http://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/id_animated.g…

It means nothing except that there will be more contributors and/because OSM data will make it into more projects. OSM might also feel more pressure to standardize things like tags for features, which would resolve a considerable problem in using OSM data. Both tag names and value formats vary from region to region, and that's probably why almost any proprietary maps software is more useful than OSM apps. Having personally had to use OSM data, writing heuristics to parse tag names and values is a lot of work. As for criticism of Overture on OSM community forums, there seems to be a lot of vague gesturing at "big tech bad, OSM community good." A more constructive place to look for what Overture means for OSM is the OSM Foundation's blog/press statement - https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2022/12/22/views-from-the-openstreetmap… Which, to my mind, reads as saying that OSM data is free to use for corporations, but OSM hopes that Overture improvements flow upstream. If my tone seems a bit negative, it's because I'm a bit tired of the negative reaction open source communities tend to have when being challenged or offered a collaboration opportunity with big tech. I feel like the approach Blender takes with big tech (like NVIDIA) is much, much more productive.

> While routing works well on OSM, the POI layer and the address layer (important for geocoding) still needs a fair bit of work, at least in the US. OSM is built from the contributions of hundreds of thousands of individuals mapping their local area, and it would be great if you wanted to help them with that work! If you're wondering how to get started, these guides might be helpful: http://learnosm.org/en/ http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners%27_guide Or, jump right in and sign up for OSM: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/new If you don't feel like signing up, you can simply add "notes" for OSM members to check out places where the map isn't accurate: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2013/04/29/openstreetmap-opens-up-to-mo… Once you've mapped your local area and are looking for something else to help out with, these tools are a great way to find other problems to fix: http://maproulette.org/ http://keepright.at/

Dropbox: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/15/why-dropbox-decided-to-drop-aws-and-… Github: https://githubengineering.com/evolution-of-our-data-centers/ Backblaze: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/our-secret-data-center/ Twitter: https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastructure/2017/… LinkedIn: http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/design-build/how-link… FastMail: https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/security.html Stack Overflow: http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/7/21/stackoverflow-update-560m-pa… Wikipedia: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers OpenStreetMap: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/tag/infrastructure/ The Internet Archive: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/16/head_like_a_memory_hole/ Gitlab tried, but didn't have the necessary in-house experience before they made the attempt: https://about.gitlab.com/2017/03/02/why-we-are-not-leaving-the-cloud/ Instagram was migrated from AWS onto Facebook's infrastructure: https://www.wired.com/2014/06/facebook-instagram/ WhatsApp was migrated from IBM to Facebook infrastructure: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/07/facebook-planning-to-move-whatsapp-off… Hacker News and Pinboard (acq. Delicious) run on a single server. It's not hard, but you do need to know what you're doing and have resources to…