Here in the UK, where I live the population is dense, I do not worry too much about land areas, or land area usage. In addition, there might be legal issues with assigning ownership of land to a particular township or municipality (where did you get this information from, do you trust it, is it up to date and are you allowed to use it?)

So I just map the things that are obvious, and uncontroversial - ways, roads, junctions, buildings, parks. This keeps me busy enough.

I think many people are now using OSM for routing (I certainly do, with my in-car GPS device and OSM data). So I spend some time at http://map.project-osrm.org/ checking the routing for the areas I visit frequently and know well. Here in London, one-way and turn-restrictions are changing day-by-day, and it is really annoying when the GPS sends you on a stupid route because of incorrect OSM data.

One last, small, but important point: When you say “but it will look a whole lot more integrated” please remember that you are tagging for the map, not the rendering engine (of which there are now, many).

Thanks for your contributions and have fun.

Best wishes

>Much Thankings to the chap who pointed me toward the geotagging of .JPGs in JOSM.
Guess that's me (I emailed you). You're welcome :)
>Not quite sure what JOSM is doing when it fails validation on upload though.
The validator is fussy, but still a good idea.
>How to get it to highlight the two nodes in question for me to ..
>Can't seem to get the validator to say..
Select the error/warning in the validator window, then click Select in the validator window. Or just double-click the error in the validator window. The problem will be highlighted.
>Keeps telling me that a watercourse is split
It would help if you posted a permalink to the part causing you trouble, then someone here can look at it and maybe make suggestions for you to try.

You got it!

I found these videos by Steve:

http://showmedo.com/videotutorials/series?name=mS2P1ZqS6

Very helpful when I was starting out.

JOSM is my preferred editor, and if you mess something up, you can just restart JOSM without uploading the changes, so I found it very "newbie friendly". It's "just" a java app and runs perfectly on linux too.

Have fun.

Welcome to OSM.

An error of 5-10 feet really isn't significant at the current time.

As I am also new to OSM I 'd like to point you at this link, that is useful when you are learning how NOT to do it:

http://matt.dev.openstreetmap.org/dupe_nodes/about.html

Please check it out for your part of the world.

Looking at the above link I have learned that "ways" need to be "joined" or "merged", and not just have nodes superimposed or "put in the same place" with the editor of your choice.

If routing software is going to work with OSM, then we need to make sure that our local (high)ways are connected properly, with turn-restrictions and all.

Hope this helps a bit. Meanwhile have fun :)

It would be helpful if you gave us a link to the tracks in question We could then look at them and maybe advise what, if anything, is wrong, and how to fix it.

I am new to OSM, and use JOSM, having seen Steve Coast's excellent video tutorials.

There's a link to them on the JOSM page:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM

Basically, your GPS unit just shows the "track" as a series of nodes (points), you need to join these up into a "way", omitting unnecessary points (eg for a straight section of track) and then label the way as a cycleway. The videos will help you.

I played them (linux), then copied the flash files from /tmp for later replaying. JOSM was trivially easy to install, run and use.

Hope this helps.

- EEE701 with ubuntu 9.10 on an 8GB SDCard.
- BU-353 USB GPS dongle (£25)

Note: You MUST use the -b option to start gpsd or you "break" this dongle.
You need a windows computer to "unbreak" it. To reset it, see this page:
http://theadventuresofsuperdoc.blogspot.com/2009/09/gps-with-cvgi-b07-on-eeebuntu.html

- TangoGPS for OSM maps and recording tracks: http://www.tangogps.org/gps/cat/About

I have ubuntu 9.10 on my EEE701. It works brilliantly with a BU-353 USB GPS dongle (which also needs the -b option to gpsd). The dongle is magnetic, so I can stick it to my hat with another magnet (excellent signal strength), and have the EEE in my backpack. Nobody has yet commented on my strange appearance (but I do live in London).

The real reason I'm posting here is to alert you to the awesome tangoGPS application:

http://www.tangogps.org/gps/cat/About

- It downloads maps from OSM, and shows you where you are.
- It records tracks for you (as *.log files, these can be converted to *.gpx with the convert2gpx.pl script found on tangoGPS's Documentation page so they can then be loaded into JOSM). No errors :)

#!/bin/bash
# tango2gpx
for file in ~/Maps/*.log
do convert2gpx.pl $file > $file.gpx
done

Please give it a try, I'm confident you'll like it.