I have a minor issue that I’d like to get resolved. I have a cheap but very good USB GPS receiver. However, it uses a weird USB connector and the cable for said connector has developed a fault (at the strain relief point, amusingly). Can anyone advise on the type of connector it uses?

In the two lower photos the cable at the top left is the one I need a replacement of. The device at the bottom is the GPS receiver, and the cable at the top right is a normal mini-USB plug. The photo on the far right is a micro-USB connector, and it isn’t that either

Get your calendars out. OpenStreetMap is having a social meetup in Glasgow – Tuesday 17th November 2009 at 7:30pm

Every three months on the third Tuesday of each month OSM is planning to have regular social meetings at 7:30pm at the Drum and Monkey

As this is the first meeting we hope to be discussing the suitability of the venue, future dates, and having a few drinks. Bring along GPS units and any other kit that may be interesting to other mappers

Central America will be there wearing a orange openstreetmap survey jacket so you can find the group

One day to go before Christmas, and the UK government have made an astounding contribution to the OpenStreetMap project. It will shortly be announced that through collaboration with the Department for Transport, Traveline, and OpenStreetMap, most of the NaPTAN and NPTG datasets will be offered to OpenStreetMap as a one off bulk import, with the possibility of updates in the future.

This means the import of up to 350,000 geocoded public transport access points, such as bus stops, ferry terminals, trains stations, etc, along with the import of up to 50,000 geocoded place names in a hierarchical format.

Once again, a big thank you to the DfT and Traveline for this massive contribution, and to the OSM Foundation for making it all possible.

It would appear that Google has decided that their map data for the Isle of Man isn’t good enough, and now allow everyone to edit it through their MapMaker system. Several things spring to mind… firstly that OpenStreetmap has great coverage of the island, and secondly, why doesn’t Google want to re-use the OSM data? It’s already freely available under Creative Commons licensing. I fail to understand their method of thinking here.

Well, not quite. I just spotted that my favourite bit of work, Anderston was featured as an image of the week on the wiki. Admittedly it was in relation to OpenStreetbugs, but it’s a bug I filed as a reminder that’s the highlight.

My claim to fame at last :-p

It’s probably already been covered, but my 30 seconds of Google-Fu hasn’t turned anything up so bear with me…

Take one OpenMoko phone,  a geolocation service like Fire Eagle, an online celltower database such as CellDB, and some code to use those lovely d-bus bindings, and you could have a location reporting service that’s easy on the battery and mostly precise in urban areas. If your area isn’t covered by CellDB, then run around with the OpenMoko GPS reciever online for a while to report celltower locations, and you’re sorted.

Use all of the above to create services like Socialight, location based Twittering, rough geotagging for photos (courtesy of Flickr and FireEagle [both Yahoo companies]) , pre-emptive OSM tile downloads, Asterisk routing – you could even implement ex-girlfriend logic to it all, if she were to have a similar device

Well, I’m sure someone has thought of this already, but I thought I would commit ideas to storage just in case. Once my FreeRunner arrives, I know what I’ll be working on

It would appear so…

To: postmaster@cityoflondon.police.uk
CC: Kenny.MacAskill.msp@scottish.parliament.uk, public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

Dear City of London Police,

I see that we still have not had a response to this request for information. Please can you provide the answers that we seek, or suggest alternative routes to go down. If we are to be arrested without good reason, we would like to know how best to respond to the incorrect assumptions made by the police.

Regards

Kyle

A recent public email I wrote, after the worrying quotes published in http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/Festival-is-key-terror-target.3723328.jp

To: postmaster@cityoflondon.police.uk
CC: gm39@st-andrews.ac.uk, Kenny.MacAskill.msp@scottish.parliament.uk, info@rcahms.gov.uk, public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

Hi,

This is a public email, also available at http://lodge.glasgownet.com/mappers-are-terrorists/
I have also included some other recipients that may consider raising this issue at a higher level, may also be affected, or may be able to comment further on the situation.

Recently, the City of London Police Head of Counter-terrorism gave a talk to the public in Edinburgh regarding the issue of terrorism to the people of Scotland, and Edinburgh in particular. This, however, raises some concerns with myself and my fellow project workers. Myself, and over 23000 others, do voluntary work for the OpenStreetMap project (http://www.openstreetmap.org/). This is a collaborative effort to map the world, and originated in the UK itself. We work to free ourselves, and everybody else, from the constraints of expensive, inadequate and copyrighted maps. In short, we aim to do for maps what Wikipedia did for encyclopedias.

To do this, we drive the streets of our country, and many others, with GPS receivers ensuring roads are mapped properly. We use cameras to verify our work, and to keep records. Similarly we draw maps of junctions, take notes of amenities, shops and anything else that is of use to everyone. We have a special deal with Yahoo to use their satellite imagery for the mapping of roads, but we still use GPS to verify these, and will still take pictures of shops, post boxes, bus stops, junctions, buildings, and so on… We even go as far as writing down house numbers, so that the next generation of in-car satnav can use our data to effectively get you to your destination.

All this flies directly in the face of Mr Lovegroves recent comments, quoting from http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/Festival-is-key-terror-target.3723328.jp

“This means noticing people who suddenly start appearing at a café and perhaps draw maps of the surrounding area. It could be someone using video equipment where it wouldn’t normally be done,”

“We mustn’t be stereotypical – a terrorist is just as likely to be a white, blonde woman as opposed to the image many people may hold.”

Given that I was born and brought up in Glasgow, I’m paler than even the average Brit. I am also likely to pull up at the side of the road, take some pictures, write on my notepad, and then drive off again. I may even be on foot or bicycle, and have a bag full of equipment from notepads to gps recievers, to cameras and pocket computers.

I would like to know what efforts you are making to ensure that the police, and the public alike, are not being thrown into a frenzied state of paranoia? To ensure that people like myself, my colleagues, and other projects of a similar ilk are not unjustly victimized due to your over-generalization. I would also like to know what we should do in order to avoid being incorrectly labeled as terrorists by the police and the public? Although the ubiquitous yellow hi-vis jacket will go far in making a person invisible to the eye, it is not the complete solution in this case. We are in danger of being arrested and unfairly held for a 4 weeks (possibly 6 or 7…) under anti-terrorism laws, just by doing our hobby, our voluntary service to the community.

Your answers, and advice, would be greatly appreciated.

Kyle Gordon

Just discovered a lightning talk by Robert Scott on the future of the KDE geo aware desktop. He touches upon how applications will soon support location awareness, mapping, photography and suchlike. KDE4 should be interesting for those of us with a GPS receiver

For those that may find this sort of thing useful, I’ve started keeping a daily dump of the Glasgow area of the Openstreetmap database around here. Also in the OSM directory will be a weekly dump of the Glasgow area.