Surely it would be against the law to copy from Google Maps?

Waze is similar to OpenStreetMap, both are creating a map based on what the common man maps. But both are very different when it comes to owning and using the data. In OSM everyone can use the data, in Waze, only they can use the data, you, the person who collected it, can't use it.

This is one of the great things about OSM. It gets fixed quicker and faster.

I have a BGT-31 and I've experienced the freezing you mention. Once or twice I've left it and it'll turn itself off when it runs out of power, sometimes i just take the back off and take out the battery.

Yes, technically you shouldn't have to add the layer tag to a bridge. In theory one could deduce later on that the bridge is above something else. However the OSM convention is to include the layer tag.

I also think 'opening hours' is the best thing to use here.

You should probably apply the opening_hours tag to the road aswell, since the road is only 'open' during that time.

Yeah +1 for Kenya. I was there for a few weeks and managed to get some traces around Coast provide (that road from Mombasa to Lamu was me. That's a fun bus journey :) )

You are allowed to use OSM for commercial purposes. You are totally free to do that. However the thing you make from OSM, you have to let people copy that as much as normal OSM data. I think they want to ask people to collect all the data, then sell it back to them and not let the people who did the hard work use the data they collected.

Yes you will.

Remember all those countries where people are mapping rubbish bins started off as a blank canvas 5 years ago. The whole thing had to be mapped from scratch. Eventually your region will be full of active mappers.

Cool. I was in Ethiopia in 2006 and I added some roads from aerial imagery. I'm suprised the website says "... Map of Ethiopia (West Africa)". I didn't think Ethiopia was in West Africa...

Well that sorta depends on what you mean by distance. Do you mean a straight line distance between 2 points (a.k.a. as the crow flies)? Or do you want to travel over roads? Are you driving a car, or a motorbike, or a bicycle, or are you walking? are you in a wheelchair? All those questions can affect how you can travel over the world. Have a look at some of the routing software, like on maps.cloudmade.com to get a route between 2 points, that will tell you how long the route is.

Hello! Welcome on board. Don't worry about not knowing much, we all started somewhere! Be bold and let's all help make this map!

Definitly leave them in. Very little map data is 'useless'. Even having a map of all the postboxes is useful.

But definitly adjust the tagging. If the roads are tagged as something that they are not, then you should change them.

There is no community consensus on how to say that "this road really doesn't have a name". Have a look at osm.wiki/Proposed_features/Noname and pick something that you like.

@chilly I've fixed it now. This is a work in progress, check back often.

I have a BGT-31 and that's happened to me a few times. First time it happened I was in Kenya and due to take a long bus journey to the other side of the country. I really wanted to get that trace, so I took the back off and disconnected the battery. It does void your warrenty but it's not hard to do.

I happened once when I was biking around Ireland, causing this annoying gap in the trace here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rorymccann/3606876259/in/set-72157619350389855/

I'm not sure of the cause or the fix. It's happened a few times recently. Maybe a firmware update?

I've been using the same SD card for ages and it was on the list of 'OK cards'

re: using a custom dictionay. If you want to get that specific you could just make an OSM binary file format and use that. It should give the most bang for buck

wow that's cool.

There is a lot of aerial imagery available that people can use to trace roads. However the one thing that doesn't give us is street names. Someone, like yourself, with local knowledge would be able to help tremendously in this area. :)

Great to see you!

I imported this data just now.

Hi donaciano,

OpenStreetMap is based on creating a free map of the world. There are lots of maps of the world, but they are copyright and we can't use them, because then our map would not be free. So we need to do it all from scratch. It's similar with aerial imagery. There are only a few sources of aerial imagery that we can use. There is worldwide low resolution data covering the whole world that we can use. That's probably the cloudy layer you see.

Yahoo have brilliantly let us use the aerial imagery from their maps. That includes some high quality parts of some areas. That's probably what you're seeing in some areas. Unfortunatly this doesn't cover all areas. many parts of the developing world are not covered.

It wouldn't matter what editor (Potlatch, JOSM, etc) you are using, you wouldn't get any better imagery.

I always add the bus route relations where I can. Sure, the data might not be used now, but it might be used later. Especially for routing.