Forum: General Topics

O stephan how could you? Now you've left free with mild advertising and become little better then the rest; is this perminant? why? i just got a new GPS :(

I'm bloody 16, i had to push to get a GPS for ages, especially a second one as is.

I'm never clicking an ad again.

Would you mind? really, that'd be awsome as there currently off by ~20 meters if they exist?


are you sure that sounds awsome, and at 17 i can have paypal and whatnot. so :) thats perfect, are you sure really though? isnt it abit unfair or something then? not complaining mind :)

okay, its been a while i think, anyway, i have compiled lots of maps, and there all stored on this site, i've even walked around stuff, and walked in their first letter in there car park (yeah i got some looks, but its nice seing it on the screen :) )

anyway, what do i do now, exactly, sorry if thats dumb.

Hi Alec,

Ok, heres a quick guide...

1. Firstly, sign up for an account at http://www.openstreetmap.org

2. You then need to get all your traces in GPX format, so either export them from the DEVICES or FOLDERS page on this site, or use the GPX Logging functioin with TMJ-Mobile.

3. Log in to your OSM account and click the GPS Traces / Upload a Trace link.

4. Upload each GPX track to the site. After a couple of minutes you should get a confirmation e-mail once the trace has successfully been processed.

5. Go to the main OSM Map page. Zoom in on your area then click the Edit button.

6. This should start PotLatch, which is a Flash-based OSM editor. Click the 'Edit with Save' option to begin with (this allows you try some editing without making any permanent changes - once finished you can then decide whether to 'commit' the changes).

7. You should then see a basic line drawing of the existing map. Press the 'G' key to overlay your GPS traces (and anyones elses) over the map as thin blue lines. You can then trace along these lines to create the new streets on the map. There is too much to explain about the editor to write it here, but click the HELP button in the bottom left corner for a useful introduction to get started. Also have a look at the OSM Beginners Guide.

8. All OSM objects are comprised of lines and points (called 'Ways' and 'Nodes'). A Node is a single point, or dot, that can represent a POI (eg School, Church, etc), or else several Nodes can be combined together to form a Way (eg Street, Footpath, Stream, etc). If a Way is 'closed' (where the last point is joined to the first point), then it becomes an Area (eg Lake, Park, Playing Field, etc).

9. OSM objects have Tags, which are used to describe the object. Each tag is a 'Key/Value' pair, for example 'highway=motorway' ('Highway' is the Key, and 'Motorway' is the Value). Objects often have several tags used in combination, eg a Node used to pinpoint a church might have the following:
amenity=place_of_worship
religion=christian
denomination=protestant
name=St Mary's Church
etc...
There is a comprehensive list of tags on the Map Features page.

There is quite a lot to learn to get started, but its all fairly straightforward. As I mentioned earlier, once you've done the first edit and have seen your stuff appear on the map, it can become quite addictive to add all the places around you.

One *VERY IMPORTANT* thing to stress though, is that you absolutely must NOT copy details from other maps, including paper maps and online maps. Mapping Data is very heavily copyrighted - the while point about OpenStreetMap is that it is a map created entirely by hand by volunteers surveying on the ground. This frees it from any copyright issues and allows the map data to be used by anyone (including TMJ), largely without restriction!

Good luck!

Cheers,
Stephen

(Let me know if you get anywhere and I'll force a re-render of your area to update the Vector tiles for use in TMJ)