OpenStreetMap - A map-making democracy.
NE Street directory and GPS navigation
[ Posted on Wed Jan 2, 2008 11:52 am ]


After all these years we now finally have a very convenient solution for creating the NE street directories with OpenStreetMap. The sizeable overseas NE diaspora can take home a GPS logger when they next go home.

Drive around the NE roads and then upload the GPS data to the http://openmap.org/ site. If there are student and local associations willing to travel to undertake this GPS map data collection project, these GPS data loggers can be funded and sent to them.

Hopefully we will finally realize this NE street directory project within a year as this awareness of OpenStreetMap pervades amongst the NE IT savvy younger generation and institutions. An immediate spinoff will be GPS navigation.

Here is another example of the paradigm shift of philanthropic democratization of knowledge sharing possible from the internet, which allows the developing remote regions of the world to leapfrog their bottlenecks and govt policy neglect, isolation and dumbing down.

A map-making democracy - Link here.

"...Armed with GPS devices and an altruistic spirit, 16,000 contributors are ...developing a world atlas free from royalties...the idea behind OpenStreetMap, a project that seeks to create a road map of the world that anyone can use without having to pay pricey licence fees to cartography firms or government agencies. And it does this by ingeniously mashing the collaborative nature of wikis and global positioning systems (GPS).

When he goes on one of his journeys, Boyle carries a GPS device that he sets to record his co-ordinates every few minutes. At the end, he has a series of dots that he uploads to the OpenStreetMap.org website. The dots connect into a line on a world map that he labels as a street, a road, or a trail.

Give it a name, and the world is a little more complete......OSM has the most detailed online street map of the Iraqi capital, even though there are very few (if any) participants there. Instead, contributors traced the streets from aerial photos found online. Now all that's left is for the mapping community to label all the nameless streets....."

Making street directory using GPS
[ Posted on May 27, 2007 6:01 am & Sun Nov 23, 2003 11:17 am ]

This has been planned for sometime but the overseas members who plan to go home, can try to implement it. The idea is to use a cheap GPS system to plot a street directory for imphal. It is a cheap project that needs a little software and memory investigation but I am sure the freeware software exist for this.

I think it is just a matter of driving in a bike or car with the GPS reading being picked up at a fast scan rate on a laptop, with a synchronised audio recording saying at what time you were on which street/leikai, so that later the GPS coordinates can be mapped to a leikai street.

You can do a trial test and then if you are enterprising enough there is big money and name to be made by compiling our first street directory with a simple and cheap idea. Just do a google search for the plotting software. The GPS kit itself is a very cheap and can be bought from any electronics or outdoors/camping shop.

GPS street directory
[ Posted on Tue Nov 25, 2003 6:29 am ]

Here is a link for the GPS street directory idea ..

The GPS idea is not to provide realtime digital GPS navigation but to use it ONCE to plot a PAPER street directory ! It is to use a simple GPS device to record the coordinates of the street as you drive or cycle along. The laptop is to automate this recording process instead of writing it on paper.

Once these coordinates are collected, it is a simple process of plotting a 2 dimensional street directory that can be printed and sold by any entrepreneur. It is a very simple and cheap business idea.

Hopefully the street map will enable the state govt to name each leikai lane and have a house number for mailing. I can’t believe that we use just the family name and a leikai name to address mails today in manipur ! This family name mail addressing is going to fail once we have more nuclear families moving residences where house numbers and unit numbers are going to be mandatory in the mailing addresses.

Also having a street directory and corresponding names of leikai lanes will make giving travelling directions easier than those we use today. This simple cheap street directory project, besides the financial jackpot, has the potential to transform our society and be a big publicity scoop for our MD group which is essential to get more credibility, participation and attract funding from our population and government.

[ Posted on Wed Nov 26, 2003 4:09 pm ]
It is a simple technology and simple idea that even a non IT person can implement with a little instruction and acquire the very affordable hardware. I have had this idea for almost a year and now felt I have been sitting on it for too long and depriving others who could implement the idea, so I decided to push it out so someone can implement the project and hopefully make some money for himself too.

There are a lot of such good ideas that many members are sitting on currently I am sure, but remain unimplemented because one is not in a position to implement it oneself. If you have been sitting too long on an idea, you will never be able to implement it. So it is best to generously publish them and let others implement these ideas and even make a profit, for the critical common goal of advancing our society as quickly as we can.

What we need more than the technology or cable connection detail, is the person in manipur or for that matter anywhere in the north east who can implement the project so we can have a street directory and also expose a freely available GPS service and technology and idea that can spawn off developments in other fields too.

It is the gathering of street data by someone cycling or riding through the streets of the leikais that is the main task. If somehow we could coordinate this with many people each cycling through their leikai street and uploading the data to us, we can chart out the final composite street directory here and then use a POD (print on demand) facility in manipur to distribute freely or at a cost.

Once this street directory data is there, setting up a real time GPS navigation system too is a small task as the software for it will be a standard one, even available as freeware, which works off this street directory coordinate data. The GPS navigation system, one may argue, is redundant in most cities of a small place like the north east but there is no harm in providing that if it cost almost nothing.

This could be an excellent rewarding project for the engineering students or even school science projects in manipur and a big confidence booster for them to BRAG about. The GPS navigation hardware can be funded by the college/school or the science and technology department (I think we have the science and tech dept in our membership). But if someone wants to take it up as a commercial venture it can be all done by just a single person over a few months.

Can GPS expedite initial road survey
[ Posted on Thu Aug 11, 2005 4:41 am ]

There is the limitation of GPS in areas where it cannot get direct sight of satellites. But can a quick drive-by GPS survey provide the cheapest, quickest and most efficient GPS survey of the new road to do the initial assessment and costing. The URGENCY of the need to find an alternate route and the development of NH 56 should not be allowed to slacken even if the starvation blockade has been suspended for the time being.

A quick search on google yields plenty of material but we might need a simple accurate GPS system hooked to a laptop with a couple of video cameras on a jeep with spare batteries to last the entire trip length. It only needs two additional persons filming the video and recording additional voice inputs of the road conditions.

The time synching between the GPS data and the video can be done later in Imphal. So this initial survey may be done quickly in a day and the main cost will be the accurate GPS system that can be mounted on the jeep and hooked up to the laptop. Someone can investigate costs of such GPS road survey systems.

http://www.pentaxcanada.ca/products/sgps/index.php
http://www.aimil.com

Can GPS expedite initial road survey
[ Posted on Thu Aug 11, 2005 8:02 pm ]

How accurate is the GPS system that is currently available in terms of determining elevation and which department owns it ? Does the full equipment with software exist for automatically recording the GPS streamed coordinates reading, to a database on a laptop.

If that automatic recording system is available, someone can drive around all the streets of imphal and record the GPS data for the roads and build the street directory of imphal.

All it needs is for the data to be collated and our IT diaspora can volunteer to generate the street directory map from it. As a pilot project if you can drive around a few main roads and capture a small GPS data stream and make it available, the IT diaspora can do some R&D. Once the best strategy is arrived at, the GPS data for more roads in imphal can be gathered and the street directory incrementally built.

Please let me know if you can arrange the GPS data for a small pilot road length and we can proceed from there. We only need a basic cheap GPS system for this project.

Collaboration of the varied skillsets of our professionals is key to our development, but unfortunately, as we see so often in our forum, it is more of the jealous, selfish, tall poppy syndrome with big egos that gets expressed instead of cooperation and mutual assistance.

Comprehensive Map for Mizoram
[ Posted on Sun Jan 21, 2007 4:10 pm ]
Aizawl, Jan 18: It is an achievement for the state Planning department's science & technology wing to have completed a 'road network mapping of Mizoram,' the first of its kind in the state. The road map, prepared with remote sensing & geographical information system, was released by Ramhluna Khiangte, technical adviser to the chief minister, in a function at I&PR conference hall today.