OpenStreetMap

Web Page: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/GSoC_Project_Ideas_2012

Mailing List: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

"OpenStreetMap is a project aimed squarely at creating and providing free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them. The project was started because most maps you think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive or unexpected ways."

Contributors to OpenStreetMap take handheld GPS devices with them on journeys, or go out specially to record GPS tracks. They record street names, village names and other features using notebooks, digital cameras, and voice-recorders.

Back at the computer, contributors upload those GPS logs showing where they travelled, and trace-out the roads on OpenStreetMap's collaborative database. Using their notes, contributors add the street names, information such as the type of road or path, and the connections between roads.

That data is then processed to produce detailed street-level maps, which can be published freely on sites such as Wikipedia, used to create handheld or in-car navigation devices, or printed and copied without restriction.

Projects

• Data Tile Service I propose to develop a data tile service which will provide fast, up-to-date, customizable map data, served as static files. It will enable new uses of map data, such as client-side interactivity, rendering, and editors, and provide a speedier alternative for some uses of the current OpenStreetMap API.
• Improve support for non-latin languages in Mapnik text rendering Mapnik has dozens of bugs related to rendering right-to-left (RTL) languages, Unicode and text rendering in general: https://github.com/mapnik/mapnik/wiki/InternationalText These bugs are critical in that they pose to hold back the adoption of OSM in various parts of the world and none of the main Mapnik developers have the unicode experience necessary to solve them. So my job would be to rewrite this part of mapnik.
• Improvements to Vespucci Multiple improvements to the Vespucci OSM editor for android, as suggested on the mailing list. My primary proposal consists of creating a user-friendly way to add/edit POIs using configurable menus, and allowing to select the map layer/API to edit (i.e. allow using Vespucci to edit custom maps). If time permits, I will attempt to implement additional improvements like local save support, undo and offline, device-rendered background maps.
• Lots of OSM widgets / OSM widget constructor A very simple widget that will have the functionality to place a maker and to generate a link to show the map with the marker, wrapped in the most popular blogging and content management tools. Additionally an advanced option that will have "Directions to here" and a routing panel functionality. The choice of a map provider will be saved and shown as a preferred provider on future run of the widget. The widget will contain several themes to fit the page where it will be placed.
• Video Based Speed Limit and Road Sign Detector plugin for JOSM A plugin for JOSM which will detect speedlimits and roadsigns from the video and help adding a related tag into map data.