Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!

This year has been a very productive year for the People' Map. All the various parties involved in the People's Map, from the individual contributor all the way through to the technical development team have all contributed significantly to the progress the People's Map has made during 2008. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our contributors, partners and in-house teams for the work and effort they have put in during 2008 as all have done a great job in contributing to the growth and development of the People’s Map.

We now look forward to the challenges that 2009 will bring the People's Map as we have quite a few big milestones to be achieved during this coming year. We start of early in the new year with launching our new People's Map website, then move on to completing the Greater London data capture project and finally completing the UK 1:100,000 scale data capture project. This is not even mentioning all the other smaller data capture projects planned with various commercial & academia partners as well as the individual contributors. So, just by looking at the above, it seems that 2009 is already going to be a busy year!

On behalf of the People's Map team, I would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and prosperous New Year!!

Top Contributors for Nov 2008

Digitising Tips for December 08

The People's Map user base is growing on a daily basis as more and more people are contributing to the Peoples Map. People have different styles and methods of data capturing, but it is important that we try and keep the end product as simular as possible. It is also very important for us to collect data as accurately as possible as this reduces valuable time spent on data verification, as we would rather like to spend it on data creation and building the map.

I have therefore created this list of data capture tips that will not only assist you with creating accurate data, but will also highlight certain issue and bugs that the system is experiencing and provide you with a work around/solution for each of these.

1) Most of you must have noticed that some of the major roads positional accuracy can be off by hundreds of meters in some areas.

Cause: This data was originally captured to a scale of 1:1,000,000 and was imported into the People's Map. This means that this data is accurate when viewed on a small scale, but not when zoomed in.

Solution: These roads should be moved into the correct position by moving the red nodes of this road to the correct location. Zoom in as close as needed to place the road node as accurately as possible.

2) Sometimes, when you are moving roads, like the example above, to the correct location, a duplicate may appear. It is therefore confusing as to which road is the actual and which is the duplicate.

Cause: All moves are registerred into a database as and when a new point is created, but sometimes a delay appears with this process and a duplicate is created. Eventually the process catches up, but the original road remains as the duplicate, untill refreshed.

Solution: This problem should not occur for much longer than January next year as the new site and database structure will be implemented, but in the mean time: If a duplicate appear, whilst editing, just flick back to and from the "View" mode to "Edit" mode and this duplicate will disappear. You will notice that the new line has been captured and the original (duplicate) has been removed.

3) Sometimes when creating a road, the actual line will change to a black line, without you noticing this. When this bug occurs, the road data will become worthless to us and needs to be recreated.

Cause: We are unsure of the exact cause, but this should no longer be a problem when the new site is launched in the New Year.

Solution: Unfortunately the only existing solution is to delete this road and recreate it. If deletion is not possible, then just leave it as it is and we will clean the data appropriately afterwards.

4) Users sometimes create roads, but forget to actually connect the road created to those it is leading from or into. Good, clean geographical road data are always connected to one another.

Cause: Incorrect Data Capture Methods

Solution: The end node of a road can simply be moved to snap to the node on the road it leads from or into. If there is no node, just create one by clicking and dragging the segment.

I hope you will find these tips helpful. Please feel free to let us know of any other problems that you have experienced whilst creating data in People's Map by emailing support@peoplesmap.com.

Why not use the Thomson Directories Maps?

What do you do when you are capturing new roads in a town or city and you have forgotten the name of the road? Have you ever come to a road in a town and could not remember what it was called, but want to capture this road and the surrounding the area! ................so what do you do?

Leaving the road blank is not ideal and copying it from other mapping sources is strictly forbidden and illegal!! You can check if the road is listed in the "Out of Copyright Map". If not, you can request the Thomson Directories Town and City maps from the People's Map to use as a reference. We have access to over 400 electronic English and Scottish town and city maps and as part of our agreement with Thomson Directories, we can send you these maps to copy the road data from and capture this in Peoples Map. Below is an example of one of the Leicester maps.

These maps cover 361 English and 54 Scottish Towns so the one you are looking for is bound to be there. Just send us an email at info@peoplesmap.com requesting the specific area you are planning to digitise and we will send you the digital copy of this specific map. You can also use your local Thomson Directory as this also have local maps listed.

Please note that the Thomson Directory Maps usually only covers the main town centers and surrounding areas, but this is a good starting point and provides other contributors with a base to work from. Some contributors already requested maps for Milton Keynes and Coventry, but don't worry, there are still 412 towns to choose from! Good luck!!