OpenStreetMap
In the last few days I've seen the diary of one fellow who wants to map rubbish bins and another, on the forum, who wants to map drinking water fountains and public restrooms.
And, here am I, in rural Thailand, still struggling to get traces of major highways.
Will I ever see the day when Thailand is so well mapped that I'll actually be concerned with rubbish bins, drinking fountains and public conveniences?
I doubt it.
Discussion
Comment from abyrd on 22 October 2009 at 10:27
Hello,
Have you seen the GT rider maps? There is a guy who rides around Thailand and Laos on his motorbike and makes very good detailed maps from GPS traces. They are inteded for motorcyclists, so they include everything from major highways to dirt tracks. They are very good - the government of Laos has commissoned him to make maps.
I think this is his full-time job, so he probably wants to make money selling the maps, but you should contact him and see if he is willing to contribute material.
http://www.gt-rider.com/contact/about-gt-rider
He might be interested in contributed something.
Comment from Buadhai on 22 October 2009 at 10:50
I have used GT Rider stuff in the past. I did a Laos road trip, pre-GPS, earlier this year based largely on information from their web site.
http://www.mgnewman.com/Travel/show.php?mode=index&show=Lao0902
But, they are a semi-commercial operation, so I doubt they'd be interested in OSM. I'll send them a note, though.
The map I use on my own GPS is from this place http://rotweilermaps.com/. Also semi-commercial
Comment from Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason on 22 October 2009 at 11:01
For what it's worth some of those blog postings are probably from countries where major highways still need to be mapped. Some people just aren't interested in mapping big things with little relevance to their personal lives and prefer to map things closer to them.
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️⚧️ on 22 October 2009 at 23:00
Yes you will.
Remember all those countries where people are mapping rubbish bins started off as a blank canvas 5 years ago. The whole thing had to be mapped from scratch. Eventually your region will be full of active mappers.
Comment from Buadhai on 23 October 2009 at 01:29
"For what it's worth some of those blog postings are probably from countries where major highways still need to be mapped. Some people just aren't interested in mapping big things with little relevance to their personal lives and prefer to map things closer to them."
I'm sure we all do that to some extent. There's a certain amount of satisfaction to seeing the details of your own neighborhood show up on line. I rarely drive a car and am mostly out on a bicycle, so the extent of my ability to map is geographically limited by my strength and undurance.
"Eventually your region will be full of active mappers."
I hope you're right. At the moment I'm the only one within a few hundred K doing any active data gathering at all. There were more, but they seem to have dropped out.
As I've said elsewhere, the current OSM slippy map rendering doesn't do much for those of us in sparsely populated rural areas. I know one mapper who gave up for this very reason.
Comment from nmixter on 24 October 2009 at 04:01
Keep on trekin. See if your can spread the word about osm to local municipalities, teachers and other leaders in the community. Get others involved. Soon the map will fill in quickly. Maybe try printing out walkingpaper and distribute them in the community.