Part 1: osm.org/user/Negreheb/diary/405306
Part 2: osm.org/user/Negreheb/diary/406030

360° Mapping Salzburg – Update #3: Better Mounting, Better Coverage

Hello OSM Community,

I’m continuing my effort to capture 360° images of the city of Salzburg for use in Mapillary and Panoramax. The goal remains the same: improve OpenStreetMap data, especially in areas with unresolved notes where better visual context can help.

Progress So Far

Here’s the current state of coverage from my 360° image collection:

My Route Planning Setup

To plan my routes, I’ve been using OSMAnd’s built-in GPX recording and map display. This allows me to see where I’ve already been and make instant decisions on which streets to cover next - without having a router trying to direct me back on track constantly.

I can also choose freely whether to ride on streets, paths, or cycleways depending on conditions. This flexibility has proven much more practical than relying on pre-planned routes.

… See full entry

Dear OSM Community and Team, Is there any possibility of accessing a newer imagery layer, such as Maxar? The current Bing Maps Aerial imagery appears to be significantly outdated, which makes it challenging to accurately update or edit map content.

I see many diaries on OSM, but unfortunately the good ones are hard to find, if they can be found at all.

In this diary, I offer some perspectives, without any technical pretensions, but just for the thinking of “what it might look like” in the vein of “Reimagining the OSM.org” or “Better-osm-org” but without the technical side.

This diary is a proposal, a reflection. Its aim is to offer a vision of what diaries might look like in the future.

Observation

Many diaries published by the community are interesting, not all of them are, but those that are would benefit from being discovered and promoted to a wider audience.

Diaries are not discoverable from osm.org. When a diary is discovered, it is almost exclusively through direct sharing via an OSM communication channel (forum, Telegram, Discord, etc.).

The aim is to offer ways to find interesting diaries more easily, to know which ones the community values or finds interesting.

Proposal

Categorise

Allowing diaries to be categorised offers several advantages:

• Easier to identify the topic(s) of a diary
• Have a list of diaries talking of a specific topic
• Easier to find a specific diary

A category would group together several diaries addressing the same theme.

This categorisation might be done in the form of keywords, for example: #tutorial #josm #streetcomplete #sotm #telecom #esri.

Add upvotes

To enable the community to highlight the diaries that have generated the most interest and that they found most useful, it would be possible to add a like (or a downvote or an emoji reaction) to a diary.

The same options for comments might be used to highlight the comments most appreciated by the community.

This system would be very similar to GitLab for issues, or Reddit for content.

… See full entry

This is my my second day into the field of OSM, i went back and edited my home grown plce, yuh my home village and and waiting to welcome any reviews because i believe it is the right think to do and am welcoming any mistakes and am hoping to add many more places on the OSM today I went ahead and edited my villages by adding the various buildings and trees that haven’t been mapped yet

… See full entry

🚶‍♂️ A journey on foot, a project from the heart.

This project began with my own steps — capturing street-level imagery from Daffodil International University to Eastern University, Dhaka, Savar. Using Mapillary, I documented the road to support open mapping.

These images aren’t just photos — they’re vital pieces that will directly support and enhance OpenStreetMap. Every frame contributes to a bigger, collaborative mission: building a better, more accurate map for everyone.

The journey is still ongoing, day by day. Feel free to share any powerful screenshots — let’s map the future, together. 🌍

are eligible for free unlimited map downloads and live updates. To qualify: Enable the OpenStreetMap Editing plugin. Log in with your OSM username. Maintain at least 30 edits over the last two months.

?_highlight=live#free-for-osm-mappers

Alhamdullilahirrabilaalaameen!

Hello everyone,

I would like to request the addition of a missing village to OpenStreetMap. The village is called Charchall, located in the Akre District, Sawsana Subdistrict, Duhok Governorate, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Basic information:

🏘️ Village name: Charchall

🗺️ District: Akre

🏞️ Subdistrict: Sawsana

🏴 Governorate: Duhok – Kurdistan Region, Iraq

🧾 Postal Code: 24005

🛣️ Main connecting road: Charchall Road

📍 Nearby village: benatah

This village is recognized by local government maps, but it is still missing from OpenStreetMap. We kindly ask for it to be added so that the area can be better represented for residents, navigation, and future development.

Today is my introduction to OSM through an internship process by Mr Samson who take as through an online intern, we are getting into it before you know it and this will mark the start of one of the greatest open street mappers who has ver been born, am actually learning a lot from this process and looking forward to contributing so much to the members of the community, we wanna make Uganda great and make my village the best in the world #2025OptusAcademyInternship

• URL: https://osmapp.org
• Full changelog: https://github.com/zbycz/osmapp/releases/tag/v1.7.0

OsmAPP is the one integrated app for OpenStreetMap ecosystem for both web and mobile. It should be as easy to use as Google Maps, but fully open-source using all the great services around. It was first aimed at broad public, but now it becomes apparent, that it works best for the OpenStreetMap contributors, who want better UX or share OSM around.

Special thanks to all our 6 contributors in this release. 🎉

The new Relation editor

The main feature of this release is the reworked Edit dialog with the new Relation editor. That took a lot of work and refactoring. Now if you click (or create) a relation, you can browser through its members and its parents and easily edit metadata accross whole hierarchies.

It is the most useful on hierarchies like the climbing=area, climbing=crag and routes (example here), but it is written in general manner and can help OSM contributors in unexpected ways.

… See full entry

The goal of https://openclimbing.org is to offer a non-commercial alternative to traditional climbing apps. Instead of filling private databases, we decided to design a structure for mapping climbing routes directly into OpenStreetMap.

This way, all data in the app is fully open and can be freely used or edited by anyone.

Image: Crag with marked climbing routes in Hlubočepy, Czechia

Key Features of openclimbing.org

• Both the database and the code are completely open, so anyone can contribute with content or code. Thanks to the open data approach, anyone can create new ways to use or visualize the data.

• Each climbing route has defined GPS coordinates, making it easier to find in the terrain. This is big advantage but also a limitation – you cannot add routes without it.

… See full entry

UM980 is relatively affordable chip allowing multi-constellation multi-frequency GNSS with capability to provide raw phase measurements and hence potentially suitable for use in OpenStreetMap environment for precise mapping susing RTK.

In this post (or potentially series of posts), I will document my experiences with using UM980 with RTKLIB and other open-source or free tools.

Hardware

• UM980 RTK GNSS USB Dongle with SMA antenna - ELT0222 (from gnss.store)
• EM-FD700 antenna (form AliExpress)

The module can easily be configured using UPrecise tool coming with UM980. It is advisable to have faster than default COM port rate ~~~ CONFIG COM1 230400 ~~~ and use the signal group 2 (note that this leads to reset of the UM980 module ~~~ CONFIG SIGNALGROUP 2 ~~~

If you need to stop the stream of measured data, you can use ~~~ UNLOG ~~~ You can also UNLOG just specific messages.

If you want to store your config of the module so that it survives unplugging and restarting the module, use ~~~ SAVECONFIG ~~~

Software setup on Android

RTKGPS+ - collecting raw phase measurements

This is to collect the raw data in real time. The last RTKGPS+ tool is release is unfortunately relatively old and hence does not support, so the native UniCore support, which is available in demo5_b34L version of RTKLIB, is not yet available in RTKGPS+. Hence it is mostly useful for collecting raw data, rather than providing real-time solutions. If you want to collect the data, choose BINEX as the format and just log the input stream from the USB. This is how to configure the module:

CONFIG PPP DISABLE

OBSVMB 1

GPSEPHB 120
BDSEPHB 120
BD3EPHB 120
GLOEPHB 120
GALEPHB 120

GPSIONB 120
BDSIONB 120
BD3IONB 120
GALIONB 120

If you want to have faster measurements, you can use ~~~ OBSVMB 0.2 ~~~ But it may be then advisable to use at least 240kbaud rate of the COM port (which is generally well supported by RTKGPS+).

… See full entry

I recently updated this map:

and this one:

… See full entry

I had a fantastic time at SOTM US. Thanks to all at OSM US for their work putting the event together.

I gave two presentations, one on MapRoulette and one on the new Meet Your Mappers tool. I posted annotated slides for the MapRoulette talk on my blog.

Dear Overture Team and OpenStreetMap Community,

This diary entry is a follow-up to an in-person conversation I had with some of the Overture team at State of the Map U.S. To their credit, they were quick to admit to and apologize for some of these omissions and verbally committed to making appropriate changes. I am therefore posting this entry for the following reasons:

• to fully document my concerns,
• to invite others to (respectfully please!) share their perspectives,
• to hold the Overture team accountable for making these changes.

Clarity on Attribution Page

In my opinion, Overture does not take care to spell out the necessity of OpenStreetMap attribution on their Attribution and Licensing page. After an optional citation comes the following language:

The Overture Maps Foundation does not require text attribution or an OMF logo on maps, visualizations, and graphics created with our datasets. If you would like to credit Overture, we suggest: © Overture Maps Foundation.

So far it seems pretty easy to use Overture data. We can attribute…but only if we want. Easy peasy! After that, the potential for additional attribution requirements is raised:

Some of the data sources we use in Overture datasets do require their own attribution, according to their licenses. For example, our Explore tool displays several Overture datasets that are made wholly or in part from OpenStreetMap data, so we added the following line of attribution to adhere to the requirements of the Open Database License: © OpenStreetMap contributors, Overture Maps Foundation.

Let’s take a close look at this paragraph. In Overture’s only mention of OpenStreetMap attribution requirements (that I could find), they frame it as a passing example. It’s as if the OpenStreetMap community should feel lucky that Overture chose us as their example of potential attribution requirements. To me, this deflection of our dataset’s license comes across as deeply disrespectful.

… See full entry

Just reached 1000 edits, so thought it would be good to dump what I have learnt so far.

I started using OSM during the COVID 19 lockdown living in Hampshire, there were many walks available but the routes were not always clear on google maps. OSM was far better and I used it for information about walks before proceding. The level of detail was great and really useful.

Fast forward to 2023 and I decide to start contributing using StreetComplete and MapComplete. I drive an Electric vehicle and the information on charge points is so obscure I wanted to contribute. This led me down a rabbit hole of StreetComplete, filling in addresses, road surfaces, bus stop shelter. Anything and everything. I learnt the importance of information that would be useful to users.

Only in the last year, have I picked up mapping, this time using ID editor, chnaging tags was a little daunting but I slowly got there. I noticed some areas around me were missing house numbers. I learnt the importance of doing a survey on foot. There’s so much to learn from looking around IRL.

The last few weeks, I have been mapping out areas that had no buildings, only Residential Areas. A few thousand terraced houses later (feels like it) and quite a few places are on the map around Yarmouth (yeah I moved from Hampshire in this time!). Most imporatntly, check the alignment of background layers before starting a new edit! It is also useful to turn off layers not used, really makes things easier to see.

Latest update, I own a drone and can produce aerial images, very useful for areas not on Bing maps. This also gives me access to a 3D view of the area, very useful for double checking my survey notes!

Maybe I’ll do another one of these at 2000 edits?

Didn’t think would see a day(again) where I have to use tor with bridge as proxy AND a vpn for accessing internet including OSM and it’s wiki but here we are… Sighs 🤦🤦🤦

Those guys at government always can and will shock/surprise civilians to the death (yet again)

Never a dull moment!

Hi everyone. I recently started contributing to the map around my university’s campus, and I thought I should get in touch with the community a little. I’ve only labeled major buildings in the campus plus some road fixups, but I hope to continue contributing more to the map around here.

Oh yeah, this account is old, but I don’t even remember having it until I tried to sign up lol.

I typically write my notes in English when they can be resolved by anyone. Even residents from another country than Sweden.

Om anteckningarna pekar mot att en behöver kunna förstå svenska för att fixa ett problem så tenderar skriva jag på svenska istället.

Spending countless hours terracing thousands of buildings yet didn’t even bother to correct the errors caused by it?