Francois Schnell's Diary

Updated "web" OSM "aware" (visualizing OSMers activity)

Posted by Francois Schnell on 21 May 2008 in English.

More informations and links:
http://code.google.com/p/osmlab/

Automatically updated (day, hour, minute) KMLs:
http://www.fxfoo.com/osm/kml/

Web examples use Open Layers/ OSM map, Google Maps API, Google Maps Search...

Discussion

Comment from wer-ist-roger on 22 May 2008 at 01:35

I don't know if I get this right but as far as I understand you use google maps to locate osm-mapper in the world.
The idea is quite good but why do you use google maps? For me it sounds a little ridiculous to use the google maps service if "we" have our own map called openstreetmap. It gives one the feeling that we don't trust our own map. But pleas correct me if I didn't understood this right. But from my perspective services like this HAVE TO BE with osm-material! Why do we go around and map the streets?

Comment from RichardB on 22 May 2008 at 09:43

I think this new OSM Aware is excellent, but in my opinion, having just the most recent day's changes is slightly myopic. If it was the last week's changes, that would be much more useful, and would then be an invaluable tool.

Would that consume too much memory?

Comment from Francois Schnell on 22 May 2008 at 11:16

@ "wer-ist-roger",

"""as I understand you use google maps to locate osm-mapper in the world."""

Hi, not exactly, I use KMLs (an open standard) and leave users the freedom to render them in the tool they feel is the most appropriate (Open Layers, Nasa World Wind, Google Earth/Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, ...). See examples on the website.

Since version 2.2, KML is now an Open Standard submitted to the Open GeoSpatial Consortium and begins to be widely use in the scientific community. As you've probably seen, the KMLs produced are not about mapping (they don't show ways anyway) but only for "awareness" of mapping activity.

Personally, I'm mainly using Google Earth for the *big* KMLs v1 and v2 (for world's hours and days) because I don't know any 3D tool produced by OSM which can render half a million nodes and still being able easily 3D-navigate in it.
Concerning Google Maps I personally use it in some cases over Open Layers because of "KML network links" support (which refresh themselves) and to render "descriptive palcemarks" (I haven't found how to do those in Open Layers yet).

So I'm not linked to any tool, it all depend on the situation and I would certainly prefer to use FLOSS tools and maps only. That said if you don't like the KMLs or the OpenLayers/OSM examples, I've spent time to comment the code for others (its Python / GNU GPL) so anyone can use their favorite open standard or morph to their favorite FLOSS tool.

""" But from my perspective services like this HAVE TO BE with osm-material!"""

Yes I mainly agree (see OpenLayers/OSM examples when it's possible) but I won't go in similar debate as ("Should we allow Internet Explorer to render the GFDL wikipedia content?","Should we ban CC-BY and CC-BY-SA pictures on Flickr since Flickr is not FLOSS?", etc).

If OSM had an "awareness" interest/tool I certainly wouldn't have loose time to develop that. I did it for myself (to easily spot active local mappers and encourage myself to map more), and thought other people could be interested or have similar needs.

francois

Comment from Francois Schnell on 22 May 2008 at 11:17

@ RichardB

Thanks Richard for this feedback. As you probably already know It's possible to manually open the different v0 KML which add themselves as "layers" in Google Earth (which should be able to handle that on a good PC):
http://www.fxfoo.com/osm/kml/world-day/

To avoid the manual handling I'll make soon a week-KML which will automatically load the seven kml-days-v0.

For the "web" visualization I'll probably have to proceed differently to lower the number of placemarks.

I'll also have a look at "overlays" of maping "density". Anyway I'll see what I can do while playing with the ratios "quantity of information"/size/RAM and update the project.

Thanks again for the feedback.

francois

Comment from robx on 22 May 2008 at 12:37

First off, I love the idea, even if I'm not getting much use out of it yet. Keep going!

Since you appear to know KML well, can you give me your opinion on the following idea:

I'd really like to view OSM data in Google Earth. The ruby osmlib can convert OSM to KML nicely (see osm.wiki/index.php/OSM_in_Google_Earth). Would it be feasible to use NetworkLinks and Regions with osmlib-generated KML tiles? I imagine running osmexport to generate KML tiles of different zoom levels similar to the way mapnik generates png tiles. That model should be able to scale to Google Earth users everywhere viewing OSM data, I hope.

Cheers
Robert

Comment from Francois Schnell on 22 May 2008 at 17:24

@ Robert,

"""Would it be feasible to use NetworkLinks and Regions with osmlib-generated KML tiles?"""

Hi Robert, not sure I understand everything but networkLinks are very easy to do (see KML doc or edit the some OSM Aware network-links KMLs) also it's possible to use the API Com (works on Windows and Mac, not sure about Linux) to retrieve informations like where the user is, what is he looking at (boundaries, altitude, etc...) so I imagine you could dynamically load the relevant KMLs.

KML doc: http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kmlreference.html
GE API Com: http://earth.google.com/comapi/

Few tests I've done with the GE API com and Python (but Ruby should be pretty similar):
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dgqhgsgm_933rjw93

For my part I'm not interested to import OSM-KML-maps versions in GE, with the aerial photography behind, to avoid to be influence by GE data in my OSM mapping.

francois