Somebody's taken notice -- Glen ----- Original Message ----- From: Paul van Helden To: Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 2:21 PM Subject: PlanetGIS announcement: Free routable GIS street map of SA?
Hi Glen, Are you familiar with the OpenStreetMap project? OpenStreetMap is a project aimed at creating and providing free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them. Contributors to OpenStreetMap take GPS devices with them on journeys, or go out specially to record GPS tracks. They record street names, place names and other features using notebooks, digital cameras, and voice-recorders. Back at the computer, contributors upload those GPS logs showing where they travelled, and trace-out the roads on OpenStreetMap's collaborative database. Using their notes, contributors add the street names, information such as the type of road or path, and the connections between roads. That data is then processed to produce detailed street-level maps, which can be published freely on sites such as Wikipedia, used to create handheld or in-car navigation devices, or printed and copied without restriction. I've known about this project for some time, but after watching its coverage grow exponentially (click to see animation) for a while now, I eventually got very excited about it. This project has become the Wikipedia of street maps and has a real potential to surpass the accuracy and completeness of expensive commercial street maps in the near future... sustainably. With this data you can do whatever you like as long as you acknowledge the source, and you don't ever have to pay for updates. The more people that get involved, the more updates you'll see, and it's all free. It is very easy to add streets, change streets (or any other type of feature) and change or add attributes like names. Anyone can do it! You can download this open and free street map of South Africa, as a PlanetGIS map, now from our website. Because this is such a living map, I will post an update on our website once per month. Your changes to the map will be included! View it or download it here: www.planetgis.co.za/browsemap.php?id=15. You can see how quickly the map is growing on this page: www.planetgis.co.za/sa-osm-progress.php. A lot of changes have been made to Planet over the past month and a half. You have to get the latest version (3.0.5) to see this street map properly. Changes include such things as multiple labels for features, boxed labels, prioritized styles, and much much more. If you use 3.0.4 or earlier to view this street map, it won't look anything like it should. Other news is that the searchable cadastral map for KwaZulu Natal is now ready for download. Let me know if you would like to contribute to OSM, the Free Wiki World Map. Best regards, Paul van Helden Planet GIS. PS: The last training course for this year takes place next week and the overflow course the following week. This is your last chance to attend this very informative 3-day intensive course until February 2009. For more information please click here.
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