Hello list and fellow mappers. I guess it's my first post here even if I map and follow the list for over a year I think (I'm sometimes on IRC).
<ant rant> I love OSM but I miss a quick and easy way to smell your pheromones guys (ie recent activity around me to spot active mappers, adapt/motivate myself in consequence, have local statistics, eventually monitor/spot 'obvious' 'vandalism'). I think a quick awareness is important for a project like OSM and I'd love to see that aspect more developed/encouraged in the future. For bottom-up emergent systems like a 'simple' anthill or a beehive it's even capital. The anthill is very efficient and well structured (nursery, cemetery,...) not because of a savant top-down architect but mainly because two conditions are met: critical mass (having enough ants) and the quality of the local communications/status between members (the pheromones). So I don't say we're ants-like and OSM is en emergent system but I think it certainly has some bottom-up stuff and a quick local mapping awareness could help. </ant rant> Anyway, to fulfill my junkie need for pheromones I've played with the .osc files (change sets) provided here: http://planet.openstreetmap.org/ The current - work in progress - result is here: http://code.google.com/p/osmlab/ http://www.fxfoo.com/osm/kml/ So basically by charming the Python snake I extract informations from the .osc files (minutes, hours and days ) and produce a bunch of kml (for quick and "dynamic" visualization in Google Earth for example). Before any eventual ant get too excited be aware that: - the kml doesn't show "ways", the tool is not intended for mapping or comparing (I think an "OSMtoKML" tool already exist anyway). I'm just interested in seeing/smelling your current pheromones , that's all ;) - the Hour and Day kml are *big* since I render every node in the first version (either placemarks or lines). On my desktop Core2Duo2.4Ghz/2Go, VistaBox and MacBookLaptop, it's ok (but bellow 2Go I doubt it would be a nice experience. I'll produced a much smaller daily/hourly KML soon for those who don't have a "gaming" PC (by summarizing nearby nodes) - if you encounter a forbidden access on the latest daily/hourly kml retry in a minute (hours/days are still processed on my Vista desktop and send to the Ubuntu server through my ISP limited upload speed , you shouldn't encounter that with minutes which are processed directly on the server) - generally (yellow, blue, red) stands for (created, modified, deleted) - generally clicking on the name of the KML in GE brings a statistics summary, you also can expand the folder to have more informations - clicking on a placemark gives information about the node and links to the associated user and the OSM map Minutes KMLs should be accessible to every machine. There's also a "live" world-minute network link here: http://www.fxfoo.com/osm/kml/world-minute-v1-networkLink.kml In Google Earth it will automatically update itself with the latest minute available and you should see the latest mappers activity For developers or power users the command line tool is written in Python and should work on Win/OSX/Linux. If you have some Python notions you should be able to modify/extend the app. to create you own kml (or something else). There are some handy parameters/variables available to change things like the elevation, colors, transparency, line thickness, icons... You can also directly edit a kml in a text editor and change the styles at the beginning of the files (colors, etc). if you experience any bug thanks to let me know on the project site '"issues" or send me a mail. Thanks also for eventual feedback/ideas. francois PS: What I plan to do "soonish" is: - the slim-down daily/hourly - networks links for daily/hourly - getting the kml sexier and trying orher kml (density image overlay, use of the time slider in GE) - a web front-end
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