Open Street Map Potlatch 2 Public Alpha

Open Street Map Potlatch 2 Public Alpha

Major changes in the interface for editing Open Street Map online.

"You know it. You love it. It's the editor on the main OSM web site. It's Potlatch and it's had some serious renovations. It's so new that now it has a new name, "Potlatch 2". But before Potlatch 2 can go live on the OpenStreetMap web site, it has to be put through it's paces. After more than a year of development, Potlatch 2 is a complete re-write of Potlatch. It has new features too numerous to mention, but for the most important feature; it is an editor for OpenStreetMap. So let's test it. "


Editing is made easier with the legend based editor. Now based in Flash [Potlatch 2 is written in ActionScript 3 using the Flex framework] and more stable than its predecessor.
Backgrounds are easier to control (OS Streeview OpenData shown above)


Point of Interest editing (Image source: OSM Wiki)

Try it you might like it.
If you want to test this new editor that is now in public alpha you can at
http://geowiki.com/

Hopefully this will be implemented in the Open Street Map main site soon.

Techies might be interested to know that this can deployed on your own website.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Potlatch_2/Deploying_Potlatch_2

Edmonton Opens Up City Data

Edmonton Opens Up City Data

The City of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada is following suit of Vancouver and Toronto and opening up city (public) data.

Data available now (more available after review of the community preview Feb 2010).

• 2009 Census - Age and Gender
  

• 2009 Census - Dwelling Unit Ownership
  

• Bus Stops Edmonton Transit Locations

• City Council Meeting Schedule

• City Parks Locations of various City parks in Edmonton

• Community League Centres Locations in Edmonton

• Locations of all Fire stations in Edmonton

• Locations of historical buildings in Edmonton

• List of Planned Road Closures throughout the City of Edmonton

• Police Stations Locations in Edmonton

• Locations of School buildings in Edmonton
  

Though Edmonton take it a stage further and provide feeds and data overlay map ready so users can quickly make use of the data.


Default View of Bus Stops Overlay on the Edmonton City of Edmonton Website

Getting to the Data

This example show the direct feed http://datafeed.edmonton.ca/v1/coe/BusStops/ as a KML (Google Earth) file loaded directly on Google Maps.
To view this Data as above - http://maps.google.com/?q=http://datafeed.edmonton.ca/v1/coe/BusStops/?format=kml

There is a stage futher, not only do City of Edmonton provide Scripts ready made so it makes it much easier for non programmers to create their own web maps.

Default is Bing (Virtual Earth) Maps though drop-down Language Environment reveals Google Maps API source code.

This a mapperz example taken from the code above. Though there are two important changes for the examples to work.
1. jquery-1.3.1.min.js needs to be fully mapped to your server/website
2.Google Maps API requires a specific API Key for YOUR site (API Key signup)

Other changes mapperz made are simply moving the latitude and longitude to centre on Edmonton and not Washington DC.

Links - and Well done to the City of Edmonton making this available.
http://data.edmonton.ca/

mapperz version (tweaked to work)
http://mapperz.googlepages.com/edmonton_google_map_source.html
source:
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Edmonton+releases+downloadable+databases/2438135/story.html

More Google Transit Cities - Canada & Brazil

More Google Transit Cities - Canada & Brazil

Google have quietly added a few more cities to Google Transit.

The New Cities are:
Calgary, Alberta Canada (provided by Calgary Transit)


View Larger Map

[Embedded Map cannot be seen in RSS Readers please go to
Mapperz Blog to see the Map]

Edmonton, Alberta Canada (unlisted here) provided by Edmonton Transit


and Belo Horizonte Brazil provided by BH Trans

Google Maps includes Transit Data

Google Maps includes Transit Data


Formally they only way to access this for the 21 (most in the US) cities was via
http://www.google.com/transit

But it seems from today that is now available via the Google Maps main portal.

It's a good way to help get information to the user, real-time traffic can also be overlayed to see any potential delays.

The coverage hopefully expands and in due course 'city' commuters will be able to access it via mobile devices.
No European Cities to date.


try it out here:
http://www.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=
&time=&date=&ttype=&saddr=university+washington
&daddr=robinswood&sll=47.598755,-122.199554&sspn
=0.10441,0.32135&dirflg=r&ie=UTF8&ll=47.651281,
-122.202301&spn=0.13414,0.32135&z=12&om=1&layer=t&start=0
(time for tinyurls google?)

Mapperz Source:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6507

Now there is an Official Post from Google LatLong Blog on this topic.

Picasa Mapplet Search - Google MyMaps

Picasa Mapplet Search - Google MyMaps New!

Allows users to Search for Geotagged photographs that have been made publicly available via the Picasa Web Albums



Other Picasa enhancements

• The size of the images you can upload - from 10MB to 20MB per image.
• Upped the free storage quota to 1GB (and counting!)
• All photos uploaded through Blogger now appear in My Photos
• Mac Version of "Picasa Web Album Uploader"

Get Geotagging your photos and share where you have been.

Official Post

Mapperz

Google Map Public Calendars

Google Maps Public Calendars


example
http://www.google.com/calendar/events?q=Marathon
&ql=London&qt=&qtd=&sa=N&page=vl&afp=393d85a865eecf88

A New Feature in Google Calender is to be able to search Public Calenders and Events

"Now you can search the web for events and add them directly to your Google Calendar. Within Google Calendar, type an event search into the search box like "Symphony in San Francisco" and click "Search Public Events". You'll see a list of events that you can easily add to your Google Calendar."

more new features
http://www.google.com/intl/en/googlecalendar/new.html

There is also a Google Calendar API

The Maps for calendar only work when the user has inputted the location of the event.
All Events should have a location, therefore should be mapped.

Source:Mapperz

Though please remember Google Calendar is still Beta.