[clug] Openstreetmap improvements

[Andrew Loughhead]

hi all,

Following on from my CLUG talk a couple of months ago, there are some
improvements in OSM worth mentioning. 

Firstly, at the time of the talk there was an online web based editor
known as "the applet", which wasn't very good.  This has now been
replaced by a Flash based editor called "Potlatch", which is really
pretty good.  Its easy to use, and has Yahoo city map aerial photography
in the background, so a GPS is now no longer required to do some
editing.  The only step before using it is to get an OSM account
(http://www.openstreetmap.org/create-account.html).

There seem to be some more people editing in Canberra too, which is
great.  Amongst other improvments, ANU is getting quite some detail now,
and some cycling routes and parks are getting added in too.  (so thanks
to whoever is doing all that).

I've also realised (a bit late) that data which only exists as segments
is not displayed by Potlatch.  I actually had street line data for most
of the Inner North suburbs in OSM, but only as segments.  I have now
converted all of these into "ways", which allows Potlatch to display
them.  The upshot of this is that anyone who is familiar with the Inner
North suburbs can contribute to OSM simply by finding and naming streets
you know the names of (but not, of course, by looking at Google Maps or
other copyrighted information). 

cheers
Andrew.