ivebeen_here

Posted by rphyrin on 9 September 2026 in English.

For ages, I’ve been wanting to tell my stories around a specific place in OSM. Not specifically a “review” of a business, but simply a personal anecdote about me and that particular place.

Years ago, I received my first invitation to give a talk about OSM. On that occasion, I proposed this project: “What if we create a platform where people can share their personal stories around a specific place?”

But I was probably just an “idea guy” back then.

My programming skills weren’t developed enough to build the platform all by myself, and I had no idea how to get funding to pay for a hosting service anyway. So I shelved the idea for a long time.

Fast-forward to 2026, I eventually thought to myself: maybe it’s finally the right time to revisit that old dream.

So I built this.

First, you log in using your OSM account.

I want this platform to be somewhat of an extension of OSM Diary.

Here, you can not only write an “OSM Diary” entry associated with your OSM account, but also link it to a specific place. Every story is tied to a particular location. If a place is significant enough that many people have posted their stories about it, you can see all the other stories associated with that place.

Then, you have three ways to choose a place. You can search for it using the “Search places with Photon” feature. You can manually zoom in on the map and pick a location. Or you can use the GPS button to automatically zoom to your current location.

Then, pick a location and write your story.