Hurray, US and more geodata now available in OSM format, ready 2 convert to Mapthis

[Codaz]

Openstreetmap provides the geodata for the US.

It's been extracted from the TIGER data.

If someone extracts it from the planet.osm file with the scripts Nieko made, you can have MUCH smaller geodata than the 500 mb tiger file.

Also India is imported.

China is scheduled for later this year.

Now 6% of the whole planet is imported into Openstreetmap.

See here for more info:

http://www.linux.com/feature/125344

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=42.7887&lon=-86.1037&zoom=12&layers=B0FT

[deadsexymikey]

I cannot figure out how to get the geodata from openstreetmap.

Also, how do I put it onto MapThis?

Guide?

Please and Thank you

[fischauge]

lucky you :-(

still waiting for germany


but i am still looking forward to go explore, then all my problems will be solved :p

[Nieko]

deadsexymikey: http://stuff.nieko.net/psp/mapthis/geodata/ <= this should be all you need to get geodata from openstreetmap, given enough programming knowledge.

[Codaz]

Nieko can you make a simple extract program ?

With a simple field: PUT THE PLANET.OSM file HERE :)

And then a radio button: WHICH COUNTRY DO YOU WANT ?

Or is that too difficult ?

[Nieko]

That's indeed too difficult :).

First, processing OSM data takes days, you can't really make a site for that :).

Also, you need more data than just OSM. You need zip codes, their locations, splitting them up by city, etc. UK zip codes e.g. may not even fit (there's only place for 5 digits).

Lastly, I'm too busy for all that now, unfortunately. People are free to use the scripts though :).

[Codaz]

If you have a quad core machine with sufficient mem and good harddrive (sata in raid) it won't take days ;)

But ok geodata seems very difficult then (without proper programming knowledge)

[M1ke]

is there any advantage to using this instead of google maps or is this used for something totaly different?

[Nieko]

Geodata simply allows you to look up where a specific street is, or which street is closest to a specific location, while you're on the go. You cannot use Google on the go, so that's the big difference.

Of course you can use only Google (well, not Map This! itself) to calculate routes.

Personally I don't use geodata that much, because I usually download routes from Google beforehand.

[M1ke]

well yeah i meant downloading google maps and not actually accessing the internet and using google maps.

so ill just stick with google then

[Nieko]

Don't know about you, but I don't have internet access in the car :).

The idea is that Map This!'ll show you where you are on the map, when on the go.

[M1ke]

i know i dont have internet access in the car. when i said google maps i thought it was assumed that everyone realized they were downloaded and not accessed on the fly in the car

[Nieko]

OK, I don't understand you. Basically, you can download graphical maps from Google Maps, and geodata from www.openstreetmap.org, both for use in Map This!. Or do you mean something else?

[M1ke]

nope you got it

[M1ke]

so how do I get the us geodata. Nieko, your readme.txt in process.zip was dutch specific so what would be different for the us.

can I use any of these files for the us? I found them on that same site you used to get europe data
http://edc2.usgs.gov/geodata/index.php

thanks

[Nieko]

I think GMDL has rather good support for US geodata, but haven't tried it out myself.

My scripts are Dutch specific in that I had a list of all zip codes+cities and their coordinates. That's the main thing you'll need, except OSM data. Perhaps such a list can be extracted from OSM data as well.

Geodata lookup in Map This! is done using zip code first, then for streets within that zip code block (ideally). This means you'll have to search in O(m+n) instead of O(m*n) (sort of). Having m ~= n is a good idea of course, but may not always be possible.