On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Ivan Garcia <capiscuas at gmail.com> wrote: > Hi everybody, for those that still doesn't know about > http://www.openstreetmap.org/ (OSM) I would explain it as a Wikipedia of > Maps, a collaboritve project started only 4 years ago and with a huge > community and volunteers geolocating until cover the last corner of the > world. > > In vietnam OSM it doesn't cover too much, Hanoi is the city most > geolocalized. IMHO this project very important because nowadays GIS services > are growing up and it helps the IT sector in Vietnam to create their own GIS > sites and programs without having to pay license oversea to Microsoft VE, > Google Maps,etc > > An example of a vietnamese case is this site: > http://newhanoian.xemzi.com/venue/category/28/NGOs-Charities#1/28 , allowing > you to search and localize Services in Hanoi.
Hey, that's my site! I think I should explain why we decided to use OSM as it's relevant to this list. For a couple of years we had been using the google satellite map with our own hand-drawn layers showing streets and street names. We thought it would only be a matter of time before Google published a great map of Hanoi. What happened instead was that Google has an unfinished map of Hanoi and, I'm guessing because the Hanoi market is not important enough, they decided to enlist "the community " to finish it for them. That, for us, was the last straw - a giant corporation asking the public to contribute their labor to building Google's Intellectual Property stash. Any effort that we would have put into completing the Gmap would have belonged to Google. By contrast OSM belongs to everyone, being licensed according to a Creative Commons license. Since we decided to use OSM we've invested a lot of time in bringing the Hanoi map up to a usable standard, by adding street names and streets (using the satellite view in the OSM editor) and by riding around Hanoi with GPS devices making traces that we used to add new ways (streets). We have GPS data on Sapa which we will convert to OSM soon, too. The missing "elephant in the room" is the Saigon map. Being based in Hanoi it's difficult for us to work on this, so I encourage anyone who spends time there to work on it, for the benefit of everyone. I just launched a new feature, btw, which allows you to search by location - you can search near to pre-defined points, or define your own search points (like "my house," "my office," etc.). You can see it at http://newhanoian.xemzi.com/entity/advanced_search Our database is far from complete, but anyone can add to it if they find missing places, at http://newhanoian.xemzi.com/venue/add Yes, any data you enter will belong to us, but you will always be credited for entering it, and you will gain influence in the new hanoian community by entering stuff. > > Anyway, the reason of this email is to encourage the people that has already > participated editing the Maps of OSM to get a free GPS device from them. > Is very easy, just go to this site and apply. > http://foundation.openstreetmap.org/gpstogo/ Interesting, thanks Ivan. Regards, Tom > > Best Regards to everybody and keep geolocating :-) > > Ivan Garcia > > > _______________________________________________ > POST RULES : http://wiki.hanoilug.org/hanoilug:mailing_list_guidelines > _______________________________________________ > HanoiLUG mailing lists: http://lists.hanoilug.org/ > HanoiLUG wiki: http://wiki.hanoilug.org/ > HanoiLUG blog: http://blog.hanoilug.org/ >
