OSM-PH presentation video at SOTM’08

Eugene reminded us that Andy finally uploaded the videos of Openstreetmap’s State of the Map Conference last year in Limerick.

I helped Mike create the presentation material. I think he gave a good overview of the status of mapping in the Philippines back then.

In case your curious, that’s me in the first slide :).

ianlopez (osm-ph mapper)

Part of my series featuring an OSM-PH mapper.

This week is Ian (aka ianlopez1115 ). He joined OSM more than a year ago. I have seen Ian’s great progress around his hometown even without the aid of high-res imagery or even a GPS!. While he’s one of the youngest Pinoy OSmer I’ve met, he is probably one of the most prolific.

Who is ianlopez1115?

I’m now an incoming freshman (studying in University of the Philippines – Los Baños by October 2009) who is interested in many things – family history, music (Hip-Hop, RnB, Slow Jams), history, and others. Though I infrequently travel, traveling is one of my favorite activities, other than exercise. I maintain a blog, but I seldom update it.

How did you discovered openstreetmap?

I discovered it while browsing through the English Wikipedia. I was curious at that time, and there were no accurate (online) maps of San Pablo City when I first edited a year ago.

What is your mapping rig (equipment) and how do you gather map data?

A GT-31 (thanks to GPStogo), and either a paper notebook or a piece of paper. I do my mapping exploits on foot, car, bicycle, trolley (a small vehicle that travels on train tracks) and recently on motorcycle. Before GPStogo, I had to make guesswork (lots of it) in areas not covered by Yahoo’s aerial imagery. When I go to Manila, I take down notes of certain places and amenities, and try to align them with the aerial images.

What’s is your OSM purity self-test score?

0.875. Honestly, I tweaked a few questions (especially about Steve Coast, moose tracking, new tags, level of detail, and level of frustration) and the questionnaire needs more new and updated questions.

Tell us some weird/strange/funny incident you encountered during mapping.

Actually, there are a few.

First, I’ve recently mapped a good chunk of Los Baños and I passed by a carinderia (editor’s note: amenity=fastfood; cuisine=filipino). I asked them “what is the name of the dormitory?” (since I’m now taking down notes on dormitories, though not rendered) They told me which name it is, and they asked me why? I told them that it is for mapping purposes. I recalled that one of them said regarding GPS. Maybe they have heard of OpenStreetMap before.

There was a similar story, only you replace the persons from the carinderia with at least one local and two recycling facility (editor’s note: shop=junk). They asked me similar questions, but it has a bit of politics in it, since one asked me if I was mapping to make sure that the politicians don’t get lost in the future sorties. I told them that I’m not doing it for them (referring to the politicians), I was just mapping the place so that no one can get lost.

Speaking of getting lost, some of my co-employees in Los Baños (at that time) were concerned since I didn’t respond to their phone calls and text messages (SMS), and my mobile phone’s keypad didn’t work at that time. Anyway, I succeeded to map two “subdivisions” (editor’s note: place=hamlet), but with some consequences.

Another one is when I mapped a footway (in my home city) and stumbled upon a railway (which will be revived in 2011), (editor’s note: railway=rail; disused=yes or used=local?). During that time, it was raining and I tried my best not to get the GPS device wet. The place was full of houses and you don’t know which footway (along the tracks) leads to a house or to a cluster of houses. I also managed to slip in a few more housenumbers and got home safe and avoid a slip that could have led to a hard fall on the muddy footway.

I could have included that incident in Tagaytay, but Eugene has already beaten me in telling that story.

What is it that you HATE most about OSM (we all love OSM, some things just needs improvement)?

Not hate, but I’m disappointed by the lack of Yahoo’s aerial coverage in Metro Manila (even though Yahoo and Google probably have the same supplier of satellite imagery), and the lack of media exposure.

Why is openstreetmap important to you and the Philippines?

It is very important to me, since it has (in my opinion) a good if not a very comprehensive coverage of the Philippines and its accuracy cannot be questioned in most places (San Pablo City, Los Baños, and Eastwood City, Makati CBD, Bonifacio Global City, UP Diliman, and Marikina for example). It is important to the Philippines as it can complement the efforts of NAMRIA, and the Philippines lacks good sites regarding online maps (especially ones that support routing, which OSM has).

How can OSM-PH expand its coverage to other parts of the Philippines?

It can expand its coverage by having more media coverage (or a high profile celebrity endorsement, though the latter suggestion may not be helpful for established and/or long time OSM contributors due to various strains of fanboyism that are attached to their fans), more meetings, talks and consultations with local (and national) media organizations and entities, nonprofit organizations, companies, schools (and school organizations), government entities and local government units and others who would like to help us by using, contributing and endorsing the free wiki world map.

Salamat Ian, college life in “Elbi” is always memorable!
One last question, how should we tag the famous tree in Elbi? :D

seav (osm-ph mapper)

Part of my series featuring an OSM-PH mapper.

This week is Eugene Alvin Villar (aka seav). Seav joined OSM for almost 2 years now. He maintains the beautiful map of Bonifacio Global City in OSM, the most updated webmap available so far.

Who is seav?

I consider myself a very techie person although my technical interests are not very mainstream (like, I’m not into computer/network gaming). By day, I work as a hardware engineer in a Japanese-owned company in Quezon City and by night I indulge myself in various online projects and hobbies. My main hobby/sideline is blogging and my primary blog is vaes9 where I write about technology, mapping, and some personal stuff.

My most successful blog is Vista Pinas, which is basically the Philippine version of the popular Google Sightseeing blog.

Aside from blogging and contributing to OSM, I am a Wikipedian and I also do web development and graphic design as additional hobbies. I also occasionally go to the gym to counteract my mostly sedentary lifestyle. :-)

How did you discovered openstreetmap?

I was vaguely aware of OSM back in 2005 (or 2006) and my impression was that it was a GPS-based UK-only project with the aim of creating an alternative to the Ordnance Survey that is free and open. It was in 2007 that I came across OSM again and discovered that it became an international project (see my blog post about my discovery: ). Since then I’ve become an avid OpenStreetMapper.

What is your mapping rig (equipment) and how do you gather map data?

Before 2009, I basically did armchair mapping. I relied on the available Yahoo! aerial imagery and personal knowledge and observation. You can do quite a lot even if you don’t have a GPS device and my contributions to OSM for 1 1/2 years (from mid-2007 to 2008) speaks for itself. In February 2009, I was able to get a hold of a Sony Ericsson w760i unit, which is touted as the first Walkman with a GPS receiver. I’ve used this (and the TrekBuddy application) to record streets in Metro Manila for which the Yahoo! imagery is not updated such as in Bonifacio Global City. In the future, I plan to get a “proper” GPS device, but even with the modest equipment I have, there’s still plenty that I can do. So I don’t see the rush to become a full-fledged “classic” OpenStreetMapper yet. ;-)

What’s is your OSM purity self-test score?

A low 0.73. While I’m pretty addicted to OSM, my minimal use of GPS explains my low grade.

The survey is biased towards mappers with GPS then?

Tell us some weird/strange/funny incident you encountered during mapping.

I guess the most serious “accident” I had was during the Tagaytay Mapping Party where we hit a rock that was just sitting in the middle of a residential road. I didn’t notice the rock and it became lodged underneath the car’s chassis. Well, we jacked up the vehicle and had a couple of local good Samaritans help us remove the rock and put it at the side of the road.

What is it that you HATE most about OSM (we all love OSM, some things just needs improvement)?

I hate that OSM is not very newbie-friendly. I’m a techie guy and a Wikipedian, and I love maps, so I had very little problem navigating the various scattered resources OSM has to offer (like the wiki). There are so many ways of contributing to OSM that a newbie interested in helping out will be quickly overwhelmed. I hope that there will be a concentrated effort in the future to make OSM much more easier to get into than what it is now.

Why is openstreetmap important to you and the Philippines?

As Rally mentioned in his interviews elsewhere, there is a general lack of good geospatial data for the Philippines. NAMRIA, the official government mapping agency, has limited resources and we can’t blame them alone for the lack of updated and accurate geodata for the country. Because of this situation, I see OpenStreetMap as a key to helping fill up this gap.

How can OSM-PH expand its coverage to other parts of the Philippines?

Evangelization is the key. More publicity and more tie-ins to NGOs, LGUs, and the local open source software communities is needed. While Google and its Map Maker service could be considered as “competition” (there are plenty of Google-lovers in the country helping to spread the word), I think that OSM can use Google Map Maker to its advantage because Google is preaching the virtues of crowd-sourced mapping and OSM can then build on top of that by preaching the virtues of free/open data.

I think a vital component of this evangelization is to self-organize as a non-profit org. While a legal entity is not strictly needed (Germany is doing extremely well without an OSM-DE organization, for instance), an org would help a lot when talking to government agencies (like NAMRIA) and LGUs, other organizations, the media, and the like.

Well said seav, thanks!

murlwe (osm-ph mapper)

Part of my series featuring an OSM-PH mapper.

This week is Marloue Pidor (aka murlwe). Murlwe joined OSM for almost 2 years now. He is our top man in mapping Davao and other areas in Mindanao. Davao City data has the user:murlwe stamp all over. Smackcode is his OSM buddy evangelizing OSM in Davao City. A true geo-geek who made his very own home-brewed GPS data logger and GPX parser.

Who is murlwe?

Marloue O. Pidor, PECE, MIT
- Electronics Engineering Faculty of Ateneo de Davao University
- Vice President for Research and Development of Neuraltech Innovations Inc.
- Cartographer of Mindanao Land Foundation Inc. for Davao City and North Cotabato. (This was before 2007)

How did you discovered openstreetmap?

By accident, I am searching for a free Davao City map when I stumbled to OSM. Davao City at that time has nothing except the shoreline.

What is your mapping rig (equipment) and how do you gather map data?

From the primitive to modern:
- I trace the roads using bond papers whenever we go to the province.
- I digitize community maps of an NGO using CAD software.
- I made my first GPS with datalogger in early 2002 as a hobby and rig it to my father’s car.
- We made our own GPS tracking system. Vehicles can be tracked via SMS and GPRS.
- Whenever I drive within the city or to the provinces, I see to it I have at least one GPS unit with me.

His students even won a prestigious competition developing a search and rescue management integrating GPS and GIS.

What’s is your OSM purity self-test score?

OSM Purity: 1.81

Hmm, the highest so far.

Tell us some weird/strange/funny incident you encountered during mapping.

It was when we are going to public high schools of Surigao del Sur and Surigao del Norte we were not told by our contacts that the 300+ kms coastal highway of Surigao del Sur/Norte is a rough road not to mention some deep mud there are only less than a kilometer cemented road. The smallest vehicle we found was SUVs, ours is a Mitsubishi Gallant Gemini. We traveled the entire stretch of highway hoping that the car won’t give up. It was like a WRC type road trip.

Oh [insert local language profanity]! The upper images shows what we call primary road in rural areas in the Philippines.

What is it that you HATE most about OSM (we all love OSM, some things just needs improvement)?

When the OSM server goes offline.

Ha! That means you need a break and do some exercise.

Why is openstreetmap important to you and the Philippines?

OSM is a community driven wiki style map and the community is the moderator and because of this OSM data will grow very rapidly. The best thing about OSM is the data is FREE we can use it whatever/however we want it.

How can OSM-PH expand its coverage to other parts of the Philippines?

The OSM community should have more seminars, workshops, tri-media exposures for OSM. And more GPStogo GPS units.

Daghang Salamat murlwe!

Plutocrat (osm-ph mapper)

Part of my series featuring an OSM-PH mapper.

This week is Jim (aka Plutocrat). Plutocrat is an OSMer for more than 1.5 years, he is the mapper responsible for updating Boracay data when Entropia posted a mapping bounty months ago.

Who is Plutocrat?

For work, I run an Information Security business, Datalude, and try to persuade people that actually thinking about their IT security is a good idea BEFORE they lose their data, rather than trying to clean up AFTERWARDS. Its rather like selling insurance. For leisure, I like to cook (and eat), go hiking (although not much in Manila), lie on beaches, and tinker with my computers.

How did you discovered openstreetmap?

I can’t actually remember. I think I’d just moved to Manila and I was looking for a map of the area so that I could acquaint myself. There were only a few ragtag bits and pieces online at the time, and OSM seemed like something that would work. To give this some context, I came here from Hong Kong where there have historically been many public maps online (e.g. centamap.com and ypmaps.com), so coming here where there was nothing was a jolt for me.

What is your mapping rig (equipment) and how do you gather map data?

I have a very simple cheap bluetooth GPS receiver – a NAVman B10 which I picked up in Hong Kong for about USD 35. I’d been watching these come down in price when the Sirf chips appeared, and I finally grabbed one, having reached the limit of what I could map on OSM by tracing Yahoo images. I use this via bluetooth with my phone, a cheap Sony Ericson K530i running MobileTrailExplorer, which will record tracks and waypoints, and display OSM in the background. If my girlfriend is driving somewhere, I also use it via GPS with a Ubuntu Linux laptop running TangoGPS. I recently found out about Trek Buddy, and installed on my phone, but haven’t really used it properly yet. So its a very basic, low cost setup: apart from the GPS, I had everything already.

My mapping is generally fairly ad hoc. If I know I’ll be going somewhere where the mapping coverage is bad, I’ll record traces. Manila is pretty well covered so I tend to wait until I’m out of Manila and I like the virgin territory best, where you’re putting down entirely new traces on the map. I think I’m more of a big picture mapper. I find it hard to obsess about all the small details of what should be tagged as what, but I love filling in the blank spaces.

Having said that, I did a fairly detailed micro mapping of Boracay a few months back which was fun, and I was recently going to do a thorough job on Salcedo village, but some other mapper beat me to it.

Other than that, I’ll occasionally visit the OSM website, and scan areas on OSM which I know well and correct things I can see are wrong.

What’s is your OSM purity self-test score?

A very healthy 0.75.

Tell us some weird/strange/funny incident you encountered during mapping.

Can’t really think of any, sorry.

What is it that you HATE most about osm (we all love OSM, some things just needs improvement)?

The fact that the Yahoo! aerial coverage isn’t as good as Google’s. I feel if we had better satellite photography to use, the OSM map of Philippines would be so much better. There are a lot of people here with time and computers, but not so many with GPS units, so this is really holding us back compared to other countries.

Why is openstreetmap important to you and the Philippines?

I enjoy playing with OSM in the same way as people do knitting or crosswords. Its relaxing getting things in order. (However you probably wouldn’t think so if you saw my desk.) Its important to the Philippines because there really are no good maps of this country, and particularly free ones.

How can OSM-PH expand its coverage to other parts of the Philippines?

Better satellite coverage. Evangelism. Talking to government agencies and convincing them to put some resources behind this project. As GPS chips start to be included in lower end phones, then crowdsourcing will become more important, but we’re not there yet.

Yes, plutocrat, not yet, but soon enough! Thanks!