This is the first version, we’ll continue improving it. Please, let us know what you think about this style change at our Mapapel – Facebook page.

Tagzania Services has several projects using OpenStreetMap, such as Mapapel, printable quality city maps, or EuskalMapa, a map of the world in Basque language.

Our commitment to promote OSM is clear; since September we’ve organized more than twenty mapping parties, talks and events. This effort, and the liberation of geographical public data by the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council and the Basque Government, has had direct effect on the quality of the map in the Basque Country.

Obviously, there are a lot of things to fix and improve in this project, and we also have thought on some features, and some extra languages, of course. Launching this application is the first step, some new will come next days.

Hope you like Mapapel.

The “Legal information” page has some changes including what we believe is a license compatible with CC-BY:ç

The content geographic information corresponding to the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council may be reproduced, removed and reused freely on a nonexclusive basis, in whole or in part, by any person in any format and for any subsequent legitimate use under the following terms:

This is the only condition of reusing content that limits its use:

1. Authorship must be indicated in any case.

It’s great news, no doubt. Our Provincial Council’s geo team is an example because of the quality of their projects and services; there isn’t around any public administration’s geo team like Gipuzkoa’s. We hope that this release decision will be copied by other public administrations.

Not only OpenStreetMap has a wonderful chance to create a great map of our province, now, companies like Tagzania Services will be able to develop really useful and interesting apps for our customers using B5M’s data. Thanks a lot B5M, eskerrik asko!

Gipuzkoa is one of the basque provinces. It’s capital is Donostia-San Sebastian.

EuskalMapa is our latest project to support OSM in the Basque Country. It has a double goal: spreading the word about OSM and giving to our native language, the Basque, its own presence on the map (using the name:eu tag). OpenStreetMap gives to our language the chance of having its own map, like OSM Alba has done with the Scottish Gaelic.

We’re working on this Basque map, meanwhile EuskalMapa is posting about OSM news, tutorials about how to edit the map or giving information about the mapping parties we’re organizing.

• Pictures of the event on Flickr
• Summary of the work done, with an animation (before and after)
• Ordizia map in OpenStreetMap

Tagzania Services has also supported OpenStreetMap by sponsoring the State of the Map conference; we’re also talking with our public administrations to liberate their (their?) geo-data. But we can’t be waiting forever, that’s why we’ve started organizing mapping parties. Don’t hate the media, become the media.

These mapping parties goal is making OSM more popular in our area, and, of course, getting some new devote mappers to the project.

This is our mapping party agenda (you can find them also in the OSM wiki current events)

• October 2, Bilbao
• October 3, Andoain
• October 24, Irun
• October 30, Amorebieta-Etxano

We’ve also organized a special mapping party in Ordizia with some high school students by the end of September.

We hope this is just the begining. That’s why we encourage people in our area to contact us for organizing more mapping parties.

There were many interesting talks, I’ve chosen my favourite ones for the Video nominations.

• Making Money with OSM – Frederik Ramm (Geofabrik): OpenStreetMap needs companies around it earning money, that will get the project more powerful for competing with other maps.
• How People Search for Locations – Ed Freyfogle (Nestoria): it was an interesting approach from the users’ points of view. OSM must think more in the map users (not just mappers).
• Open Paper Maps – Mike Migurski (Stamen). Walking Papers is a nice project for helping mappers to improve OSM data.
• Free and Open Palestine – Mikel Maron. Mikel and his collegues have done a brilliant work mapping Palestine. Hope he goes on doing it in other countries.

“State of …” talks were also interesting, specially Egypt, Cuba and Japan.

• Egypt: It’s amazing seeing how their map has changed in just one year with just a few volunteers.
• Cuba: How can they map without GPS devices or good satellite images?
• Japan: He was a funny guy. He walked about 24 km for mapping a shrine!

We’re really positive about our first SOTM, our talk in the Geomob session (thanks to Christopher Osborne!) and the sponsoring (it was nice seeing the Tagzania logo near Cloudmade’s or Ito’s). We got some interesting feedback about Mapapel and we’ll keep on working on it improving the website and adding some new city maps. We’re also thinking about how can we improve OpenStreetMaps presence in Tagzania.com

See you next year!

There are other things we haven’t shown you, like the Tagzania app for Android we’ll publish soon. Have a look at the demo below: