Es kann verschiedene Gruende geben wieso Mapnik manchmal etwas laenger braucht. Der haeufigste wahrscheinlich ist das die Mapnik datenbank gelegentlich komplett neu geladen werden muss (nicht alles funktioniert sauber mit den minutely-diffs). In der Zeit der Aktuallisierung kann dann nicht gerendert werden. Dieser Process dauert meinst ein - zwei Tage und wird bei Bedarf alle paar Wochen mal gemacht. Die gewohnte rendering Geschwindigkeit sollte also bald wieder zurueck kehren.

If you are interested in rendering your own map please do give it a try. There is some documentation of how to do it at osm.wiki/Mapnik and I believe there are other tutorials of how to use Mapnik to render your own map using OpenStreetMap. Also, do feel free to ask on IRC or the mailinglists if you do get stuck on setting up a map rendering. There are many examples of people setting up their own renderings as the default one didn't suit their needs. You also don't need to render the entire world, but only a part like for example Thailand if you don't have the resources to. Some examples I know of are e.g. the Netherlands-Tileserver at tile.openstreetmap.nl, the Map for India (http://xlquest.net/ unfortunately seems to be down at the moment), the various language renderings by wikipedia ( http://cassini.toolserver.org/tile-browse/ ) and many more specialised ones like the cycle map or the public transport map (http://www.öpnvkarte.de/). So although the comment by Zartbitter might not have been the most helpful to the average user, it does have a point that OpenStreetMap is so much more than the single rendering presented on openstreetmap.org. We don't do a particularly good job at showing that diversity though. (osm.wiki/Using_OpenStreetMap is somewhat of an attempt at it but could be improved).

However, I can also completely understand your frustration. Even though no one gets paid, everyone wants some form of reward and a nice map detailing all the hard work you have put in is a good reward. We have seen it in many other places too, until there is a good rendering of some feature, people are much less likely to add the data for it.

I haven't compared how 2 GPS (with different chipsets) and 1 GPS on two days compare, but in general, I have found that using two GPS works quite well. At least to know when the accuracy is good and when it is bad. I haven't so far had the case where the two traces lie on top of each other and they are off my more than perhaps 5 - 10 meters.

In case you haven't come accross this, the Map Compare tool by geofabrik does something similar ( http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/ ). Unfortunately Geofabrik's one only allows you to compare to google maps and not to yahoo maps or Microsoft maps. It is also side by side rather than an overlay.

Ah, yes, it could do with some optimisations! It keeps the entire list of Points in memory and needs to reproject them on every change of map. I probably need to start dropping older nodes after a while. But really, the problem is that there is too much activity in Osm... ;-)

If those roads exist in reality they should not be deleted. Just because they are useless to you doesn't mean they are useless to others. We try and map the world as accurately as possible and with as much detail as possible, so if the roads exits, they should clearly be mapped. If you personally want to _add_ them is a different matter, and everyone should only add as much or as little as they like.

From what I have seen, it is actually a very interesting combination that happened there. The map background that you see is indeed google maps and as far as I can tell can't be changed to OSM, but as we all know, the license / terms and conditions of Google Maps only allows you to use their bitmaps and does not give you access to the underlying vector data. However, inorder to create a game like this, you need the vector data in order to maintain the database, calculate lengths and highlight individual roads and this is not possible with google maps and therefore they use OpenStreetMap vector data for this. So IMHO, without OpenStreetMap, this game would not have been possible (as a license from Navtec / Tele Atlas would have probably been way to expensive) and thus is a prime example of why OpenStreetMap is needed and is "better" than the free as in beer google maps.

I can only speculate about why they ended up using Google maps for their tile background, as the underlying game data (OpenStreetMap) and the tiles (Google) obviously don't always match perfectly and cause some interesting artefacts, but my guess is that they wanted to use the marketing power of the google brand name. And looking at the media hype, who seem to imply that this is a google game, they were quite successful at that.

It is a real shame though that none of the media have actually picked up on what their use of OpenStreetMap actually means and have mostly failed to even mention OpenStreetMap being used at all. Somehow we need to use this game for our own positive PR and spread the word why free data is so important.

Ich glaube JOSM loescht den created_by tag ohnehin bei allen Objekten die veraendert wurden und neu hochgeladen werden. Mit der Zeit sollten diese tags also ohnehin verschwinden. Es gab zwar so weit ich weis auch ein paar Diskussionen ob diese created_by tags per Bot entfernt werden sollen, es wurde aber glaube ich "entschieden" das es das ganze nicht wert ist. Wenn alle wege nur desshalb veraendert werden um den created_by tag zu entfernen blaeht das unnoetig die history tables in der Datenbank auf. Wenn der created_by tag hingegen immer nur dann (automatisch) entfernt wird wenn ohnehin der Weg geaedert wird, verursacht das weniger overhead und sollte, wenn auch ueber einen etwas laengern Zeitraum zum gleichen Ziel fueren. Es schadet aber auch nicht wenn du in den gebieten die du ohnehin aenderst dann auch bei allen anderen Wegen die created_by tags loeschst.

Welcome to the project! You might be interested in the fact that there are quite a few other programs for Nokia phones that allow you to record GPX files and more importantly also allow you to display OpenStreetMaps on your phone (either with or without internet connection). This can be quite useful when mapping, as you can see what has already been added and what still needs surveying. Some of these programs also can do routing or have other ways of helping you mapping. There is a nice list of available software (although rather lengthy) on the wiki at osm.wiki/Software/Mobilephones

The GPS accuracy is in general much worse at slow speeds like walking, but with a bit of interpretation is usually still ok if the environment isn't too difficult.

Have fun mapping your area!

It looks like this might have been due to "bad data". The Multi-polygon of the San Diego boundary relation contained a residential road which seems to have caused mapnik to render the entire San Diego polygon as one big residential road. With the removal of the way from the relation ( osm.org/browse/relation/111890/history ) this will hopefully get rendered correctly again once the renderer gets to rerender it. Unfortunately the renderer is a bit overloaded at the moment, so it may take a while to rerender it.

Thanks go to Ldp for quickly finding the cause and fixing it.

Je nach dem wie weit man bereit ist zu gehen, kann man teilweise schon OSM auf Navis zum laufen bekommen, allerdings meist mit einbussen, denn wie nightdive schon anmerkt, kann man OSM bislang so weit ich weis nur auf Garmin nativ, also mit der vorinstalliertem routing application, verwenden.

Die meisten Navis laufen auf basis von Windows CE und koennen somit auch viele andere Programme fuer WinCE oder WindowsMobile ausfuehren. Mit wenig aufwand kann man die meisten Navis "hacken" und einen normalen Windows Explorer erhalten um dann andere Programme zu starten.

Moegliche programme die du verwenden kannst sind z.B. gosmore ( osm.wiki/Gosmore ) oder moeglicherweise Navit ( osm.wiki/Navit ), wobei deren winCE port nicht immer funktioniert.

Eine weitere moeglichkeit waere eine Java virtual machien auf dem Navi zu installieren (z.B. PhoneME) und dann eines der vielen java apps fuer handies zu verwenden ( osm.wiki/Software/Mobilephones )

Keine dieser Optionen sind allerdings ganz leicht ans laufen zu bekommen und somit wohl eher nicht fuer Otto-Normal-Verbraucher zu empfehlen. Da muss man dann in der tat noch etwas warten bis die verwendeten Karten formate entschluesselt wurden.

I don't know if this is an option for you, but I thought I'd mention that one can get GPS receivers quite cheaply (for under 20 euro with a bit of luck) that one can then connect to a bluetooth enabled phone to record tracks and potentially display maps.

On the otherhand, one can do quite a bit of mapping without the need of a GPS if the basic road layout is already available and I think that the need for GPS is sometimes over emphasised in OSM. Things like walking-papers or other basic tools can be quite useful to note down details relative to roads and intersections

Have fun continuing mapping and have a good holiday

Der Namefinder hat leider ein paar performance Probleme und kann nicht mehr mit der Last mithalten. Ich habe gehoert das desshalb der update process seit Januar komplett gestoppt wurde (wobei ich mich hier total irren kann). Es gab wohl schon mehrere Versuche die Situation zu verbessern, aber bislang hat keiner die noetige Reife erreicht, da es ein extrem schwieriges Problem ist eine gute Suche zu schreiben. Hoffentlich wird der derzeitige Versuch es neu zu schreiben besser gelingen, da er schon recht vielversprechend aussieht.

you might have some luck with getting one of the j2me apps working ( osm.wiki/Software/Mobilephones ) which would give you a bigger selection to try from. Both GpsMid and We-Travel for example have some offline routing capabilities. Although there have been a few successful reports of running j2me on windows mobile, getting the gps working is often a bit fiddely and depends on which jvm you are using. So it may well turn out to not be a viable solution. In case you don't have a jvm installed at all, you can try the PhoneME feature midp jvm from http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~davy/phoneme/?q=node/10.

I would be interested to know if you manage to get anything working, as I think there are a huge number of Windows Mobile PDA/PNA out there that could benefit from OSM, but at least to me, it feels like an area that has been neglected a bit software wise in the OSM community.

Another good way to check for these types of errors is keep right (http://keepright.ipax.at/report_map.php) It very nicely presents potential problems on the map.

Congratulations and thanks to all who made 0.6 possible!

GpsMid (http://gpsmid.sourceforge.net/) is another option for using openstreetmaps with a cheap Gps receiver on your phone and record tracklogs to use with OSM.
Altogether, there are a whole bunch of good options by now, depending on your needs. Checkout out osm.wiki/Making_Tracks_with_Homebrew-ware for a list of options.

Nice work!
Although the road network is reasonably complete in central London, I think your example shows nicely that the POIs still have a lot to go in central london. Perhaps we should have a Metadata mapping party for central london, once we start mapping again at the Wednesdays meetups. Adding POIs, speedlimits turn restrictions and house numbers...

Hey, nice work! I will be flying to Madeira on Friday and so I hope to be able to fill in some of the road names and details once I am back. Not sure if I'll get to Porto Santo though. Never the less, I better update my GpsMid again, to make sure I take the very latest version of the map with me. :-)

If you are looking for a cheap solution, then perhaps getting a simple GPS mouse and connecting it to your mobile phone is a good solution. You can get GPS receivers for about 20 pounds on ebay (although it is probably worth spending a few pounds more to get a decent receiver). Assuming you have a already a phone with a big enough screen, thats all you need apart from some software for the phone which you can get for free. There are a bunch of options available (osm.wiki/index.php/Making_Tracks_with_Homebrew-ware#Mobile_Phones_.2F_J2ME) from which you can pick which fits best to your needs and your phone.