obligatory update post – feb 2010

For those of you following this blog, here’s a few geo-things I’m busy with lately (hence the lack of new blog post).

OSM-PH Garmin GPS Maps – the Garmin GPS maps you used to download every two months is now updated DAILY. OSM-PH data is continuously improving on a daily basis (here’s a link on the daily changes in Metro Manila), it is only fitting for OSM-PH Garmin users to get the most updated map. Nothing fancy here, just a bash script and cron to do the job.

• Download the free map
• Release announcement

OSM-PH “Map” for Loadstone Satellite Navigation – Another service I launched is the free download of Loadstone data extracted from OSM data. I made this service available when a blind guy sent me an email, saying:

we are two totally blind guys who are probably the first users of gps technology here in the philippines.

we already travelled from commonwealth to binondo using our gps receivers and our talking cellphones and we arrived safely.

that’s why we would like to meet with you so we can ask technical info from you to improve our navigating. we use osm maps converted to csv and txt files.
…
kindly honor our request because we would like also to be active contributors to what you are doing in mapping the philippines, well perhaps to start a new map department for blind travelers.

These guys are using Loadstone GPS a satellite navigation software developed for Symbian Mobile/phones using the Series60 platform useful for blind and visually impaired people using screen readers. I find it very exciting for blind people to use the data Pinoy OSMers are actively
building for several years.

I plan to provide monthly updates of this data. Again nothing very fancy here, the data is available as well as the tools. They just need a bit of help to to easily load the data in their Symbian phones.

• Loadstone-GPS website
• Download the “MAP”

Step Juan Walking expedition – I also joined the volunteer team to help Tomas Leonor of Step Juan. Step Juan is a walking expedition to walk from Pagudpod to Sorsogon to raise funds for the cancer children under the Cancer Warriors Foundation.

My role? You’ve guessed it right. I worked with the team planning the routes and making maps for the website. 🙂   Follow Tomas’ journey in this map.

Over the OSM Advocacy front – we recently conducted a mapping workshop with the Geodetic Engineering students of FEATI University in Manila. As always, Eugene and Rally did an excellent job helping the participants get started with Openstreetmapping.

We plan to continue conducting mapping workshops to expand our contributor base, so if anyone is interested just give us a call. 🙂  Here’s Eugene’s post workshop report.

On the work side of things (yep, the items above are my hobby/fun geo-things), I am very excited that we are starting to get deeply involved with using Geospatial FOSS in our research projects. We are currently testing several new technologies for data editing and collaboration; developing customized web-enabled applications; and technical support partnerships.

As an avid user of Geo FOSS, this an exciting opportunity for me and my colleagues to get our “hands dirty” in custom geo-app development.

That’s it! And know, back to my cave!