OpenStreetMap
I thought someone else would have made a diary entry about NearMap.com by now, in any case NearMap.com was mentioned on the talk-au mailing list by
James Andrewartha this past week.
They're currently operating in "Sneak Preview", but already online they have very high resolution imagery for Perth and surrounding areas, Adelaide, Brisbane and half of Sydney. As a bonus the imagery they have online is one to two months old, although on their website you can view older imagery as well.
No only do they use OSM data for over laying streets and such, but their terms of use actively encourages people to vectorise their data into OSM.
For details on how to utilise their imagery in JOSM and potlatch head over to the wiki page documenting this:
Discussion
Comment from JigPu on 8 November 2009 at 17:26
I was blown away when the USGS began to offer 30 cm orthography in select areas, but this blows those out of the water in terms of resolution! This is truly a wonderful resource for those of you living down under :)
Comment from JohnSmith on 8 November 2009 at 17:34
@JigPu yup the imagery is great, but only covers a very small fraction of the land mass.
Comment from melb_guy on 9 November 2009 at 03:41
I can't wait until they upload some imagery of Melbourne. I am actually doing edits in other cities at the moment just so I can play with the high res imagery! Potlatch needs to add another zoom level so I can more accurate edit things such as building outlines!
Comment from morb_au on 9 November 2009 at 09:32
"someone else" did not make "a diary entry" because they are too busy mapping against the new dataset. Think Homer Simpson and the way he elegantly eats his food.
Comment from Unusual User Name on 10 November 2009 at 03:35
All this positivity? You must be able to think of the negatives.
It's too beguiling to finetune the curve of every last street and footpath and trace the footprint of every single building. Recent imagery just means I need to update areas I've previously passed through.
Any other negative suggestions?
Comment from caldini on 9 December 2009 at 23:23
Wow - that's incredibly detailed. You could map back yard junk if you wanted to.
Do the people in Carnarvon even know you're mapping them? Surely their input is needed to fill in all the street names etc.
Looks like it's coming along nicely. IMHO, a detailed map is a beautiful thing.
Comment from JohnSmith on 10 December 2009 at 00:56
It's unlikely, due to the size, that anyone in Carnarvon is aware of OSM or NearMap, but this effort was in part to raise awareness by making an example :)