“not until yesterday, when a classmate reminded me of the existence of such feature, did I remember I could use it as a crutch to my mapping”

um, you can’t. Like it says on the “Copyright & License” page to the left, “OSM contributors are reminded never to add data from any copyrighted sources (e.g. Google Maps or printed maps) without explicit permission from the copyright holders”. Google haven’t given us such permission.

Seconded - nice work!

Coincidentally I’ve just (yesterday) come back from a nine-day cycling holiday in Jordan. Took my GPS everywhere i went. Uploaded the tracks to OSM this evening and… Every. Single. Road. was already mapped.

That’s terrific news. When we cycled Coast & Castles last spring, the Blyth section was the blemish on an otherwise very enjoyable route.

You can check out the code at https://github.com/systemed/iD .

The data is from the api06 test server.

Do pop in at the #osm-dev IRC channel on OFTC any time if you’d like to ask any questions about it!

Excellent. Really looking forward to this. Is the source anywhere?

All of this pretty much depends on the ‘OWL’ technology and there’s a lot of progress being made on integrating this into the main site.

Excellent. Have you seen OpenStreetPad?

I clicked on the website you mentioned but it appears to be full of horse porn. Is there a mistake?

Ha! There seem to be a few Potlatches out there…

Hire A Recreational Goat For Your Adult-Themed Party! The Goat Asks No Questions. Good Time Guaranteed.

Welcome back!

Definitely value. Use a GPS tracking app, then upload your tracks to openstreetmap.org. Then use an OpenStreetMap editor to trace over the tracks and draw in any roads or trails that are missing.

Superb.

A query from an interested journalist - what maps were the University using before? Let me know and I’ll feed back.

Joakim is right. Send a message to [email protected].

And don’t open accounts that you don’t want to keep open. ;)

Nice work!

@ca_hoot: I’d say as a first step, look at TileMill. At present it’s the easiest Mapnik-based solution for playing around with stylesheets, and it uses a CSS-based language which is easier to get to grips with than the complex old Mapnik XML format.

Something that would be hugely useful would be to start to reverse-engineer the current Mapnik stylesheet into TileMill’s CartoCSS. As I understand it a one-to-one mapping isn’t possible (CartoCSS doesn’t do quite everything), but there may be things that we can lose in the cause of making the stylesheet more maintainable. If you had the time to work on this, that’d be the first big step towards moving the stylesheet on for the future.

@ca_hoot: Sure. But that’s not going to happen unless someone actually makes the change. As ever in OSM, there’s lots of people saying “I would like this” and precious few actually doing it. Personally I’d love to get more involved with the default cartography, but sadly P2 et al take up all of my the time.

So… how about it? If you think it could be done better, set up a Mapnik instance and start playing with the stylesheets. Build something. It won’t improve unless someone makes the effort!

Switch to ‘MapQuest Open’ using the layer switcher in the top right and all your motorist-centric needs will be satisfied. :)

Reminds me I should get round to finishing the P2 equivalent… https://github.com/systemed/potlatch2/tree/tracer