Re: [Talk-us] Which county next?
I'd like it if I could enter any county I wanted and start working on that :). On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 11:58 AM, Steve Coast st...@asklater.com wrote: Cool you're third in line. I made a couple of fixes today. Main thing is that the % completeness figure is now correct. Steve On 6/7/2011 3:50 PM, Jeffrey Ollie wrote: On Jun 6, 2011 2:10 PM, Steve Coast st...@asklater.com wrote: http://readwriteworld.cloudapp.net/?p=243 Right now it's going through King County, WA. Anyone have a preference for what order to go through the US? I'd love to see Polk County, Iowa... ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Which county next?
There's always some risk that people will enter bad data. There's also an argument that they'll have more incentive to do a good job if it's an area they know and care about. On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 12:09 PM, Steve Coast st...@asklater.com wrote: A few people have requested that. The problem is collusion, what I don't want is people to enter bad data. Showing you random points is one guard. I think selecting the county isn't far from just ordering the batches by county. So I think that places you third on the list. Get clicking! Steve On 6/8/2011 11:07 AM, Peter Batty wrote: I'd like it if I could enter any county I wanted and start working on that :). On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 11:58 AM, Steve Coast st...@asklater.com wrote: Cool you're third in line. I made a couple of fixes today. Main thing is that the % completeness figure is now correct. Steve On 6/7/2011 3:50 PM, Jeffrey Ollie wrote: On Jun 6, 2011 2:10 PM, Steve Coast st...@asklater.com wrote: http://readwriteworld.cloudapp.net/?p=243 Right now it's going through King County, WA. Anyone have a preference for what order to go through the US? I'd love to see Polk County, Iowa... ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] OSM User Testing
I think it's great that something is being done on this. Personally I would suggest finding a few volunteers to be tested and sit in a room with them. You don't need a lot of people to find the key issues and I think you get more from seeing them do it in person and having them think out loud rather than using remote screen recording software. I've posted this before but I highly recommend this book on usability testing, Don't make me think, it's a very quick read: http://amzn.to/9A5LTz Just my few cents! On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 10:42 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: On Sep 30, 2010, at 10:40 AM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 16:20, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: On Sep 29, 2010, at 11:27 AM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 15:34, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: Those people fill out a form and are invited later to use some simple online screen capturing software while asked to do some simple tasks and this is where you come in. What screen capturing software package is it? I believe it is http://www.usertesting.com/ So, a Windows only client: http://www.usertesting.com/popups/ApplicantFAQs.aspx Feel free to suggest something 'better' then. Steve stevecoast.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] OSM User Testing
Will see what I can do, though not quite sure if I'll be able to make it to SF or not. But would be happy to find some volunteers and do a few usability tests in Denver before then, and record them so others can see them (in SF or wherever). Obviously would be good to have some scenarios worked out on the wiki before doing that. Incidentally, I summarized what I think are some of the key points from the Don't make me think book (and my general experience) on usability, with some geo-examples, in a recent 5 minute talk at Ignite NoCo (Northern Colorado), in case anyone is interested: http://vimeo.com/15015261 On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 10:54 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: sounds like you should join us in SF! On Sep 30, 2010, at 10:52 AM, Peter Batty wrote: I think it's great that something is being done on this. Personally I would suggest finding a few volunteers to be tested and sit in a room with them. You don't need a lot of people to find the key issues and I think you get more from seeing them do it in person and having them think out loud rather than using remote screen recording software. I've posted this before but I highly recommend this book on usability testing, Don't make me think, it's a very quick read: http://amzn.to/9A5LTz Just my few cents! On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 10:42 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: On Sep 30, 2010, at 10:40 AM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 16:20, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: On Sep 29, 2010, at 11:27 AM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 15:34, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: Those people fill out a form and are invited later to use some simple online screen capturing software while asked to do some simple tasks and this is where you come in. What screen capturing software package is it? I believe it is http://www.usertesting.com/ So, a Windows only client: http://www.usertesting.com/popups/ApplicantFAQs.aspx Feel free to suggest something 'better' then. Steve stevecoast.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us Steve stevecoast.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] MapQuest Announcements
To answer the original question, I think it seems pretty clear that MapQuest's aim is to have a US site at some point in the future. They have committed $1m to growing OSM in the States. You can see US data now by going to any of the other MapQuest OSM based sites - for example you can see Denver at http://open.mapquest.co.uk/link/h/4-aGys On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 11:15 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: it's a wiki... :-) On Sep 25, 2010, at 7:43 PM, Richard Welty wrote: On 9/25/10 8:55 PM, Russ Nelson wrote: jeremy jozwik writes: will there be a US version? http://new.mapquest.com/ still pulls from non-OSM maps The quality is not there yet. Look, for example, at Wayne County, New York. Or Yates County. Or Livingston County. They are unusably bad (except for the railroads, hehe). or almost anywhere in West Virginia... richard ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us Steve stevecoast.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
[Talk-us] Colorado OSM meetup tomorrow
There will be an OSM meetup in Denver tomorrow - we're planning to make this a regular monthly get-together. More info at http://bit.ly/cynjjD Cheers, Peter. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Address Lookup
I don't agree that there is no value in address range interpolation like TIGER uses. As anyone who has edited TIGER data knows, it is not very accurate. So cleaning that up (address aspects as well as geometry and attributes) is a valuable thing that we can do in OSM. Getting a viable geocoding function using address ranges is much more achievable in terms of the effort needed than doing individual properties. And the two approaches complement each other anyway - you can always search for a specific property address and fall back to an address range if you don't find it. Cheers, Peter. On May 21, 2010, at 4:24 AM, Apollinaris Schoell ascho...@gmail.com wrote: there is not much value to add address interpolation in US. this can be done easier and more consistent by using a plain tiger DB. only if detailed addresses are added to osm there is additional value. and yes this is a lot of work much more than streets. some counties offer detailed data and it can be imported easily. in other places it has to be done by survey. but wasn't that the idea of osm? competing with google in processing public data has no chance anyway. why not concentrate on the strengths of crowd sourcing. On 21 May 2010, at 6:45 , Val Kartchner wrote: The goal of Open Street Map is to eventually do everything that commercial map products do. This would include address lookup. I've looked around and the way of associating addresses with streets doesn't seem to work very well. The simplest way (requiring the fewest nodes) still requires a lot of work. For instance, for an example I've picked a street around my area: West 2550 North. This is just the ways needed for the streets themselves. (I didn't include the names on the cross streets because they don't matter for this example.) AB C D E || | | | || | | | +--+-+--+---+---+---+---+-- || | | | | || | | | | FG H From what I understand, next to each place where another street intersects this street I will have to create another node (on each side of the street) tagged with addr:street and addr:housenumber. I will need to connect the nodes on each side of the street with a relation. The relation I will need to tag with addr:interpolation and even/odd, as appropriate. This makes the simple street above now look like this: AB C D E || | | | || | | | **--*---*---*---*---*-* +--+-+--+---+---+---+---+-- **--*---*---*---*---*-* || | | | | || | | | | FG H This is a LOT of data to manually add. Is there a simpler way? No, I don't have a better idea. - Val - ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Resigning in protest
Chris, my goal in participating in OpenStreetMap was and still is to help build a free and open map of the world. The license change does nothing to alter that goal. I'm sorry you feel the way that you do. I encourage everyone to continue to contribute to this great project. Cheers, Peter. On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 5:20 PM, Chris Hunter chunter...@gmail.com wrote: Well, between the new links on the map and today's WIKI edit, it looks like the Brits have decided to shove the ODbL down our throats after all. I have major philosophical issues with the way the license change is being handled, and feel that I can no longer participate in the OSM project. I'm in the process of deleting all of my contributions. I'd like to encourage each of you to do the same, but in the end it depends on your goals for the project. I am being careful to only delete objects that have not been touched since I created them - roads, portions of the TN River, etc... Please respect my wishes and do not undelete these objects. Sincerely, Chris Hunter DiverCTH ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] UX Review
I very highly recommend this book on web usability for ideas on how to do usability testing: 'Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability' by Steve Krug http://bit.ly/bHJ8ni. A friend of mine in Denver is a great usability person and we've used this approach on several projects and found it very useful. A couple of key things I took from my experience in this area: usability testing really isn't complicated - the main thing is that you just need to do it, not assume that you know what will be obvious to someone else. You sit someone down in front of the system, give them a scenario or a task to do, and watch them. It is humbling and frustrating to watch someone else use your software with no instructions. You have to resist the temptation to jump in to tell them what to do. You also ask them to think out loud about what they are trying to do. That's pretty much it. I think that doing a few of these in person tests will tell you much more, more easily, than larger scale automated tests. Things that seem obvious to you but not to others come out really quickly. The second surprising thing is that you need far fewer tests than you think to provide useful insights. The times I've done it, the glaring issues were obvious after testing 2 or 3 people. We would fix those issues and then move on to another small set of tests. I'd be happy to work with you to find a few volunteers to test, and record and publish the results. As you say, we need to figure out the right scenarios to test. Cheers, Peter. On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 7:02 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: Dear all One of the clear pieces of feedback from all the talk about improving the OSM UX was show us these users who really find it difficult to use OSM. So, we're going to do that. We have a rough plan of action below Nate Bolt of the splendiferous boltpeters.com has volunteered to help OSM with a user interaction review. Nate, as part of Bolt | Peters, did exactly this work with wikipedia: http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability_and_Experience_Study Where they basically screen recorded people trying to edit in wikipedia with the following goals: • identify obstacles that novice users encounter in editing a Wikipedia article—including, but not limited to—adding personal content, fixing a typo, adding a reference, and contributing to discussion pages • identify obstacles in creating a new article • evaluate the self-sufficiency and legibility of help materials and documents found on Wikipedia.org • evaluate how novice users interact with templates • discover user experience patterns and issues that have not been previously identified. Together with Mike Migurski, famed geohead, creator of walking papers and graphical butterfly at Stamen.com, we've come up with a rough plan to get feedback from new users to OSM. It's a very similar approach to that taken by Bolt | Peters with wikipedia. We want to find out from the real newbies what the issues are and lay them out clearly. Nate is independent of OSM and will be able to present a cold hard look at what's good and what we need to work on to improve things so we get more newbies contributing. * A small piece of javascript from ethnio.com is put on the new user page in openstreetmap * Once in some very small sample size (perhaps between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 10,000 signups) a popup appears * The popup says something like Hi! We'd really like to know why you came to OSM and they say simply why. This is open ended on purpose so we catch as many things as we can, not just what we're looking for, but things we won't expect. * They're offered to record a short (10 minute max) screencast of them trying to achieve whatever it is (like look at a map, find OSMers, add a PoI and so on) * That screencast is analyzed in aggregate with many others by Bolt | Peters with all their expertise in doing this stuff, and they come back with a set of findings. We're looking at both http://www.usertesting.com/ and http://www.openhallway.com/ to do the recording. Both Mike and I will pay for it, and might solicit donations and stuff if it looks beyond our budget. I can't say this enough, and I always get responses from people who think that I just set something out in stone - so I'll be super super super clear: NONE OF THIS IS SET IN STONE. We need your feedback on everything before we go ahead. I mean _everything_. So, please tell us what you think about it all. Here are some questions: What should our goals be? (General UX? How good/bad signup is? How good/bad editing is? How is it finding info?) How often should we ask a signup for feedback? (the more the better but we can only look at so many) How can we include more crowd source feedback? (I think of asking random signups for feedback as crowdsourcing it) What else should we think about? Yours c. Steve ___ Talk-us mailing
Re: [Talk-us] Incorporation
As I've mentioned before, every lawyer I have ever talked to about this has told me to incorporate in Delaware. My current company Spatial Networking is based in Colorado but incorporated in Delaware through a registered agent - you can find lots of these via Google. On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Andrew Ayre a...@britishideas.com wrote: I believe that California will charge $800 per year income tax for for-profit corporations even if you make a loss or no profit... A large number of Corporations in the US are incorporated in Delaware because my understanding is that they are very friendly towards businesses and easy to deal with. Andy Serge Wroclawski wrote: There are two major candidates for incorporation at the moment. The first is California, with the possible help of an attorney that works with OSM International. Unfortunately this has been difficult as the attorney is quite busy at the moment, and so asking him to do more pro-bono work may be difficult going forward. As discussed, we can incorporate as a corporate entity, get our EIN, and then work on the non-profit part- part of which will be the mission statement and other documents we're working on at the same time. -- Andy PGP Key ID: 0xDC1B5864 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- Peter Batty - President, Spatial Networking W: +1 303 339 0957 M: +1 720 346 3954 Blog: http://geothought.blogspot.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] [Imports] [Talk-ca] TIGER considered harmful
If you have two streets intersecting and put a number on that node, it isn't clear which street that applies to. You could add an artificial node close to the end of the street, but that seems a bit more messy to me. So my gut feel is that the simplest approach is still attributes on the street. You can also fairly easily write some validation checks that would highlight (and fix) many errors (number ranges being repeated, or a range which was reversed). On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 6:16 PM, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 7:47 PM, Dale Puch dale.p...@gmail.com wrote: Split each intersection, then build relations for the streets. Do you even have to split? Just add a node, and put the house number on the node. One of the problems has been which side is left if the way is reversed. Put the house number on the nodes. Up is the direction in which the numbers go up. Reversing the way then has no effect. :) ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- Peter Batty - President, Spatial Networking W: +1 303 339 0957 M: +1 720 346 3954 Blog: http://geothought.blogspot.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] [Imports] [Talk-ca] TIGER considered harmful
When I said messy, I guess I was thinking of two things - one is doing the import, as you mention here (which is sort of where the discussion started). This seems quite a bit more complex if you have to split ways and insert nodes. The other is in writing a geocoding engine based on the data which is produced. If you have the data all on the way, it is a simple query to find one record, and you interpolate along the geometry. I'm not sure how you would write an effective geocoding engine directly based on the model with nodes - I think you would need to write some additional that traced the network and created a new data structure similar to what you would have in the case with attributes on the road. So it seems to me simpler to just create and maintain that data structure directly. In terms of how to decide what number you use when you split a way, you have the same problem in either case (whether you have nodes at the beginning and end of the way, or an attribute range). The most obvious approach is to interpolate based on distance, which is what geocoding engines using address ranges do - this would give you the same geocoding results before and after. If you specifically know the street numbers either side of the split then you can enter those instead. Cheers, Peter. On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 6:43 PM, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 8:32 PM, Peter Batty peter.ba...@gmail.com wrote: If you have two streets intersecting and put a number on that node, it isn't clear which street that applies to. You could add an artificial node close to the end of the street, but that seems a bit more messy to me. If you're adding the nodes manually, it's reasonable - you'd want the numbers to start at the place where the house is anyway, not at the intersection. If you're adding things automatically, I guess I have to admit it's a little messy - much less than adding two ways, but yeah, it's a bit artificial (you could always add a second node in the same exact location as the intersection, but only connected to one way, but let's not go there). Alternatively, you could use a relation, to specify which way you're talking about. From a technical standpoint I guess that's better, but people don't like relations. So my gut feel is that the simplest approach is still attributes on the street. How do you split a way? Do you just guess at the address at the point of the split? Isn't that even more messy? -- Peter Batty - President, Spatial Networking W: +1 303 339 0957 M: +1 720 346 3954 Blog: http://geothought.blogspot.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] [Imports] [Talk-ca] TIGER considered harmful
Russ, I think you misunderstood my comment. I am in the TIGER import is a good thing camp. But in the areas I have worked in it has needed a fair bit of minor positional cleanup. My point is that in those cases where you need to graphically adjust a street, I don't want to have to edit three or more ways because there are additional address ways on either side of the street. On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 8:06 PM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: Anthony writes: On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 7:24 PM, Peter Batty peter.ba...@gmail.com wrote: I'm coming a bit late to this debate, but I just wanted to raise a fairly basic question, which is whether the Karlsruhe schema is the best one to use in the situation we find ourselves in with TIGER, where quite a bit of data cleanup is anticipated. Peter, I have to challenge you on this. *Some* TIGER data needs quite a bit of cleanup. *Some* TIGER data is already in good shape, and the only fixes needed are 1) joining at county borders and 2) unjoining at bridges. Just for grins, I looked at Ogdensburg, NY. Been there a few dozen times and hadn't done any editing (uploading as I send this). Frankly, I see very little that needs correcting, and all the usual stuff that needs to be added ... which would need to be added without the TIGER data. Like footpaths, buildings, POIs. So yeah, a lot of work above and beyond TIGER. It's not like there's a shortage of improvements. It's ridiculous to claim that the TIGER import has caused anybody to not edit. If it has, then we've failed to explain exactly how wonderful OSM can look when it's fully populated. I signed up for the USA 'conversion team' with the express intention of challenging the use of the Karlsruhe schema. Anthony, what is your design? How is it better than Karlsruhe? Is it in the wiki yet, so the rest of us can see it? -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog -- Peter Batty - President, Spatial Networking W: +1 303 339 0957 M: +1 720 346 3954 Blog: http://geothought.blogspot.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] U.S. Local Chapters
Thanks to Bill for his previous post. I was going to also point out what he mentions here and was in the other article he linked to - lawyers I have talked to (albeit a small sample) seem to recommend Delaware for incorporating (non-profit or otherwise - my startup Spatial Networking is incorporated in Delaware, even though I live in Colorado). In regard to having a physical location etc, there are lots of companies that will act as your registered agent and fulfill the needs of having an office in the state etc. I think this generally costs in the order of a couple of hundred dollars a year. Some example services here: http://www.google.com/search?q=incorporate+non-profit+in+delaware For example, this one charges $118 all in: http://www.amerilawyer.com/de_non_profit_corporations.htm It seems far better to me to do the incorporation through an independent agent like this, rather than associating OSM with the physical address of any individual member, who might move, lose interest in OSM, etc etc. So personally I think there is a pretty strong case for just incorporating through an agent in Delaware, unless there are others who know of reasons not to do this (IANAL). Cheers, Peter. On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 9:48 PM, Bill Ricker bill.n1...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 2:19 PM, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: I'd recommend setting up the draft bylaws prior to making the decision of where to incorporate. How we want to run the organization will help determine where (and whether) to incorporate. Right, as otherwise the locality dictates what sort of bylaws you can have. Anthony's point on the bylaws talk page that a discussion of principles and alternatives should come before legally drafting seems wise -- and drafting thzlegalese to match our principles and the law of the chose state should be left to a professional. Massachusetts has several oddities in recommended not-for-profit bylaws and THREE separate annual reporting requirements. It's the only jurisdiction I have board / officer / bylaws-committee expertise in, and I would have to recommend incorporating a national entity elsewhere. There's probably a state with worse paperwork for a small board, but I don't know. The only safe early choice is probably Delaware ... provided you don't make replacement of provisional bylaws difficult, which error any good Delaware attorney should help a provisional board from making. Per expert I cited in previous post, it may be the only sane choice anyway. Having been a Director and Officer of a 501(c)(3) corporation subject to Discovery in Litigation, I can not recommend serving on a Board that does not have adequate Directors' Liability Insurance. -- Bill n1...@arrl.net bill.n1...@gmail.com I am not a lawyer, and Justice Scalia agrees it's better that way http://url.ie/2k04 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- Peter Batty - President, Spatial Networking W: +1 303 339 0957 M: +1 720 346 3954 Blog: http://geothought.blogspot.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] U.S. Local Chapters
Based on some of the other discussion I've seen about local chapters, it seems as though it may well be useful for us to have an OSM legal entity in the US for various reasons. So if it's not too much hassle to set up I think it's probably worth doing. I would vote for doing just one at the US level though, I think that more local groups (state level etc) can just be informal organizations as they are now, and can use the US local chapter if and when they need a legal entity. So I'd be supportive of setting something up, and happy to help out. Cheers, Peter. On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 9:39 PM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote: I currently do work with my local group that organizes around a wiki page: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MappingDC I think there potentially can be some cash flow. We have been approaching local governments to get permissions to import their data. In the case of the District of Columbia we can just download it off their website. Some our municipalities there is a fee for them to make a DVD of their data. There are individuals willing to pay in order to obtain the data, but it does amount to cash-flow. There may be other situations where organizations would like to donate equipment such as GPS units as well. Also when dealing with NGOs and governments having legal standing can also potentially give us more weight as well. Also since OSMF is U.K. based they can't necessarily handle legal issues within the United States depending on the scope of them. I'm not saying it is necessary to form a legal entity, but I don't think it is totally black and white either. -Kate Chapman On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:19 PM, Bill Ricker bill.n1...@gmail.comwrote: At least some US local cadre organize around the state and city wiki.osm.org pages, with just an event announcement on the list. eg http://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Boston I've been around 501(c)(3) and related state incorporation and charitable regs more often than I'd like. I'd rather spend my mapping time mapping and leave any corporate governance to the OSMF and CloudMade. Incorporation is useful if there are assets or liabilities. I don't see a cash flow in a OSM chapter. If there isn't enough cash flow to pay for Directors' Liability Insurance, incorporating just focuses Liability on the Officers and Directors. The asset is the Map date, rights for which are held by OSMF. CloudMade and the OSMF should handle the legal issues. Let's map. -- Bill n1...@arrl.net bill.n1...@gmail.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- Peter Batty - President, Spatial Networking W: +1 303 339 0957 M: +1 720 346 3954 Blog: http://geothought.blogspot.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Garmin OSM map for whole US
A bit of a sweeping generalization there Paul :). There are lots of people who travel frequently on business all over the US - I have been one of them, though less so these days. Often trips might be at short notice and take in multiple states. It's also very common for people to take road trips across multiple states. Given the somewhat clunky nature of getting downloads and transferring them to GPS units, combined with the ridiculously cheap cost of storage cards these days, I think that a US extract would be very useful to a lot of potential users of US OSM data. On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 5:08 PM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: On Sat, 2009-09-05 at 11:24 -0700, Dave Hansen wrote: Surely I'm not the only person that needs a USA exrtact, though. Is there really no one that has one available. I'm not sure it's a common need, considering that most US states are larger than most countries in terms of geography, with most of the population more or less stranded within 100mi of home largely due to high fuel prices, complete lack of railroad transport and abysmal air transport connections. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- Peter Batty - President, Spatial Networking W: +1 303 339 0957 M: +1 720 346 3954 Blog: http://geothought.blogspot.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
