So yesterday I had a quick interview with a journalist from the Nenagh Guardian – my local paper – about this OpenStreetMap (OSM) mapping malarky.
As most of you will probably know OSM is to printed atlases from AA, Ordnance Survery etc, as wikipedia is to encyclopedias. People can contribute data to the project through a variety of activities: going out and actually mapping an area with a sat nav or gps unit [even a mobile phone with GPS in it such as an iphone, nokia n95 or whatever], tracing data off Yahoo [and other] aerial imagery, filing bugs on the openstreetbugs website or literally drawing in information via the walking papers map making website. And better again, this is about providing free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them.
Anyway…I mentioned how the OpenStreetMap map of Nenagh is more complete than even the latest commercially available maps for Garmin and Google Maps and listed off a few ways how OSM could be used commercially: by real estate agents, courier companies, how being able to pin-point where all the amenities are would be useful for tourists, and so on.
Compare the Open Street Map of Nenagh with the Google Map of the area – as you can see, there’s still quite a bit of work to be done – Millers Brook needs to be marked as such along with the various groves, avenues etc that comprise that estate. Plus all the amenities, shops [perhaps even their opening hours] and the Shannon Development Industrial Centre still need to be added – as I’m sure are some other small portions of the town that I’ve unknowingly neglected.
It’s fair to say that this will never be finished – existing housing estates will be extended, there will always be urban development plans that when implemented would also need to be included on the map.
It would also be cool to have the new “Nenagh Cycling Hub” rendered on the opencyclemap.org website.
I discovered the OpenStreetBrowser site to be a great test of the data that myself and others have entered – it’s also a great way of demonstrating just what can be done with OSM data.
If you happen to spot something that I’ve missed please either drop me a comment or use the openstreetbugs website.
On a related note: it would be good to see a PEAR/PHP based client/component for interfacing with the OpenStreetMap server so that interesting apps utilising that data could be implemented on the LAMP stack – something to go alongside the Services_GeoNames package from pear 
are we going to see Pix. for the news paper soon here ???
thanks
hopefully! It’s on the back page of the latest edition – out today, Wednesday; titled “Putting Nenagh on the map”; under which they have a cropped print of the Nenagh map.
Once the article is made available on the newspaper’s website, I’ll link to it.
Unfortunately it all comes across as though I am the only one involved – there’s no sense of “OpenStreetMap community” in the article. Still, it’s good publicity for the project!
Ken,
Well done on the project to date. I am delighted with your comment above regarding the Cycling Hub project which I have been involved in. I was looking at using “mapmyride” to put a more detailed map online but your idea looks like the way to go. I would love to discuss this if you are interested.
Michael Molamphy
@michael
thanks for the somewhat misplaced praise
I’d certainly be interested in helping you get a more detailed map of the cycling routes online. the great thing about OSM is that any details I’d add for general use could also get pulled into the more specific cyclemaps and vice versa.
Plus we could get such maps printed out for cyclists and other tourists passing through the region on a ‘just-in-time’ approach – with each newer print being more up-to-date and comprehensive than the last – add in new B&Bs for example.
The article in the paper itself is available online at http://short.ie/osminguardian
update: I added Lisboney Business Park yesterday. That’ll be the pink area of land in the ‘standard’ renderer on the openstreetmap.org site.
I know this page is a bit old and dated so not too sure if anyone will reply to this but what about the latest handheld GPS systems from the likes of Garmin?
Most of these nowadays come with mapping facilities and a whole host of other features.
I’ve been trying to find the best GPS for the money so I can use it for street and terrain mapping and the Garmin ones seem pretty good. Any thoughts?