cloudmade and mapzen
I’ve been using OpenStreetMap for a while now, but Cloudmade and its map editor, Mapzen, are a new offering from OSM. Designed to enhance the mapping experience for more commercial users, it offers a really delightful map editor that allows you to easily create new styles from either the vanilla map or from a range of user-generated styles. Fun!
The one thing lacking in OSM – that all UK users will know about, at least – is the patchy postcode locator. For those not aware of the UK postcode system, it’s based on fairly precise house number data – and that data, although paid for by the taxpayer, is not available to the likes of OSM. The recent good news that some postcode data will be released by the government in the spring, was quickly dampened by the realisation it’s pretty widefield – Googlemaps will still be necessary for a precise street location fix, at least for the time being.
This is the style I’ve been playing with for PsyGeo Edinburgh (still too messy at the mo but sure beats customising OSM data in illustrator). And here’s a good interview (ignore the bantering hosts) with OSM founder Steve Coast.
