Yeah – It’s been a while since I’ve talked about OSM. I’ve been busier than normal – and it’s a good thing. I don’t have a lot of time to “learn” or “play” with much of anything. I’ve helped a bit with the MapLesotho and I’ve done a few other special projects but I’ve more or less just been hands off with OpenStreetMap.
So with what little bit of free time I’ve had I’ve popped open JOSM and started moving roads to their “close enough to right” location using the BING imagery in East Tennessee. It’s fun work if I get a spare 30 minutes and can make some quick edits. I call it my fidget spinning for a mapping guy.
It’s amazing how bad the roads are…and the major water bodies. There are some major roads which have been corrected. About all the residential roads haven’t. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to name a lot of the roads. It’s slowly getting fixed. Overall East TN is much improved but it needs more improvement.
In all of this I’ve had a couple of people want to get involved – so I’m slowly dragging them into the OSM world. I’m a bit torn as I’m hesitant to say “join the mailing lists”. As I haven’t and won’t.
The big thing I did notice – Digital Globe Imagery. In JOSM/ID you have access to it. It’s newer in many cases than the bing imagery – although the resolution isn’t as good. Except – I can live with that because I’m finding new building construction. I’m finding new road construction. So my edits will be more current.
Bing
Digital Globe
Of course I need to get back into some form of community involvement. At one time I had a blurb on my business website on OSM and how to get involved locally. At some point we started a Facebook group that has fallen into 3 years of no posts. Soooo – it’s starting back up as a place to post information. Maybe at some point I’ll also find that wiki page I started and add to it.