OpenStreetMap: A Year of Edits Video

OSM 2008: A Year of Edits from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

The movie above detailing edits to the OpenStreetMap.org project during 2008 was produced using a custom written Open GL package running on a Linux workstation. OpenStreetMap is a wiki-style map of the world and this animation displays a white flash each time a way is entered or updated. Some edits are a result of a physical local survey by a contributor with a GPS unit and taking notes, other edits are done remotely using aerial photography or out-of-copyright maps, and some are bulk imports of official data.

OpenStreetMap started in 2004 and the rate of contributions is accelerating with four times as many people contributing to the project in 2008 compared to 2007. During the year, edits were made by some 20,000 individuals and there were bulk imports of data for many places, including the USA, India, Italy and Belarus which are clearly visible in the animation. (wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Potential_Datasources)

This animation was produced by itoworld.com with financial support from ideasintransit.org;Various stills are available from flickr.com/groups/itomedia/pool/. The music is 'Open Electro' by Vincent Girès' jamendo.com/en/artist/silence and can be downloaded from archive.org/details/silence-silence.

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Google Street View in the UK? / Crowd Sourcing for Commercial Gain

The BBC have a good article online looking at opposition to introducing Street View to Google Maps in the UK. Apparently Google started capturing London this week.

The main issue is with the UK's privacy laws where people cannot be photographed without consent if the output is to be used for commercial gain - as is the case with Google Maps. There is also the issue of privacy in terms of houses appearing on the Internet - we did some work for Camden Council a while back and that was removed from the web due to issues with houses being identified in 360 x180 degree photographs.

The BBC article is well worth a read, especially for the quotes from the Privacy International Group.

We know Google have done a lot of good for mapping etc and we at digital urban are one of their strongest supporters but recently with their launch of MapMaker some criticism is emerging - see Google Wants to be TeleAtlas at the OpenGeoData Blog.

Web 2.0 is all well and good but companies are starting to use Neogeographers and Crowd Sourcing for their own commercial gain. Although of note is the word 'free' and the availability of free data, regardless of source, has changed the world of geographical information behind recognition over the last couple of years.

Its a controversial subject, as our in-box is testament to resulting in this being a revised version of the original post, we will have more thoughts on this in future posts...