#indiewebcamp 2012-12-29

2012-12-29 UTC
friedcell, laurian, zztr, brennannovak, catsup and tantek joined the channel
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tantek
happy birthday aaronpk!
tilgovi joined the channel
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zztr
yay getting older! yay still living! yay time!
brennannovak and barnabywalters joined the channel
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Loqi
barnabywalters: tantek left you a message on 12/28 at 11:01am: FYI: when I tried to login with indieauth to http://waterpigs.co.uk/notes/740/ with http://tantek.com/ I got the error: "Unable to find the controller for path "/login". Maybe you forgot to add the matching route in your routing configuration?" - whereas it *worked* when I logged in via indieauth on your home page http://waterpigs.co.uk/. Then when I logged out and tried logging in via the form at the top of
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barnabywalters
tantek: Yep, that's a weird bug I haven’t resolved yet. Login fails the first time but succeeds the second
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barnabywalters
Not that logging in will make any difference right now unless youre me anyway :)
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@BarnabyWalters
Making a plugin for my #indieweb software to add #OSM Nominatim geocode data to my posts with location. Also almost… http://waterpigs.co.uk/notes/779/
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barnabywalters
tommorris: upwards of 8000 posts? Impressive!
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tommorris
indeed.
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tommorris
there'll be more when Twitter give me my data.
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barnabywalters
I was actually surprised just how well Devon is mapped. I still manage to correct things and add new stuff everywhere, but it’s very denser
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barnabywalters
On a similar note, what happened to osmcheckin?
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barnabywalters
s/denser/denser
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tommorris
it's very, very slow and almost totally unoptimisable
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barnabywalters
stupid autocorrects
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tommorris
I did manage to accidentally leave the Amazon server running, which cost me $50.
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barnabywalters
wow — a pricey thing to run! Where along the chain is the slowness?
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@tommorris
On other #IndieWebCamp matters, @aral now seems to have rebooted his personal site after having previously reboot... http://tommorris.org/posts/8004
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tommorris
Amazon charge most of that for a MySQL server I wasn't using.
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tommorris
Which was my own silly fault.
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tommorris
The slowness is the Overpass/XAPI API
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tommorris
the eventual plan is to have a community hosted venues database.
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tommorris
which would have a "find my the (n: Int) nearest things to (lat, long)"
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barnabywalters
So who is organising that?
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tommorris
Me. Eventually.
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tommorris
I've been busy with work type work.
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barnabywalters
Sounds like a good plan if current APIs make things difficulty
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tommorris
and, you know, Christmas and stuff.
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barnabywalters
Yep, all that stuff :)
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tommorris
I have another OSM project that I'm working on soon
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barnabywalters
tommorris: Is there a way to easily add photo data to OSM?
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tommorris
I've been playing with Leaflet.js for WikiQueer Maps, a map service specifically for LGBT stuff. it's amazing how good OSM has got in terms of tool support
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tommorris
as in, mapping photos on to maps?
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tommorris
leaflet.js is probably the way to do it.
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barnabywalters
I need to play with that. Soon I am going to start adding checkin-like features inc. maps to my notes
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barnabywalters
I’ve been looking at the various tools build around OSM and have been amazed. It seems like a really solid community
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tantek
tommorris, so regarding a "community hosted venues database", I have mixed feelings about that.
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tommorris
tantek: well, it's really more just an API wrapper around the underlying OpenStreetMap data.
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tantek
So far my experience with Foursquare's "community generated/patrolled venues database" is that a few nitwits can pollute/damage the data quite badly, with deletions, overmergings etc.
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tommorris
there's nothing stopping people not using it if they don't want to.
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tantek
And sad to say, same thing happens with Wikipedia (excessive deletions, overmergings).
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tantek
So I hold little hope that a "community hosted venues database" wouldn't have all the same problems, if not worse.
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tantek
I'd rather pursue an alternative of a distributed indieweb hosted venues "database".
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tommorris
well, OpenStreetMap is sort of a community hosted venue database, it's just a gigantic pain to query
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tommorris
all I want to do is expose it in such a way that people can start using it.
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tommorris
incidentally, it's also a giant pain to update. having a way for normal people to report back inaccuracies would help with that.
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tantek
I'd rather post a check-in on my own site, and have it use a venue URL that is *also* on my own site. Then at that indieweb venue URL, it can link to equivalents on Foursquare, OSM, FB, and whatever other centralized venue databases are created in the future.
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tommorris
OpenStreetBugs already exists, but nobody really puts venue related stuff in
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tommorris
so, that's very sensible
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tantek
because frankly, I don't trust any centralized venue database, no matter how well intentioned or how "open"
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tantek
have had too many experiences with too few bad actors screwing things up
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tommorris
and indieweb reusers of OSM data would be highly advised to store the data about that venue as both a value and a reference.
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tommorris
and… hCard kinda solves that.
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tantek
yeah, hCard seems good enough for this
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tantek
I personally would add some extensions
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tantek
beyond simple "tags" in as "category" property values
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tantek
things like: hours open
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tantek
that seems to be a hard one to solve from a format perspective
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tommorris
so, OSM have come up with a rather strange string format for opening hours
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tantek
even more so, hours *foo*
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tantek
happy hours
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tantek
hours that food is served
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tommorris
for churches, there's a service times property
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tommorris
I can't remember what it's called
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tantek
hours that espressos is served (some cafes start shutting down their espresso machines early, or bars too)
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tantek
s/is served/are served
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Loqi
tantek meant to say: hours that espressos are served (some cafes start shutting down their espresso machines early, or bars too)
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tommorris
for nightclubs and bars, you have some which are free to enter before time T but then have a cover charge after time T
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tantek
these are all from real world cases I've encountered, and made a personal note of in my address book for future reference, but which I'd be more than willing to share publicly for others to use
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tantek
typically I share these today as Foursquare tips
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tantek
so at least they're somewhat discoverable
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tantek
and potentially I can re-import them semi-automatically into my own indieweb venue URLs in the future
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tommorris
well, part of having an open source venues db is that people could post that stuff on their own sites, and then pingback them to such a db
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tantek
liking the new aralbalkan.com btw - thanks for linking to it
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tantek
except it needs an hCard :)
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tantek
wonders how we get Aral to show up in IRC instead of just Twitter.
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tommorris
seduce him with good UX
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tantek
wonders the same about barnabywalters sometimes ;)
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tantek
hah - IRC and good UX?
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tantek.com
edited /checkin (+2279) "aspirations and indieweb venues"
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tantek
tommorris - I amended happy hours to include the free to enter before time T case ("discounted cover")
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tantek
feel free to add +1s or add more items: http://indiewebcamp.com/checkin#indieweb_venues
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tommorris
operating hours is possibly something one can steal from OSM
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tommorris
for microformats that is
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tommorris
opening hours gets really difficult when you take into account countries which have extended holiday periods
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tommorris
Ramadan for instance
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tommorris
(when I was in Israel, my hotel was fortunately right opposite an Arab-owned shop that remained open during Shabbat.)
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tantek
or really easy, in that every day gets it's own custom opening hours "event" - maps much better to hCalendar
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tantek
s/it's/its
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Loqi
tantek meant to say: or really easy, in that every day gets its own custom opening hours "event" - maps much better to hCalendar
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tantek
huh, I thought I had already added some OSM references to this discussion on microformats.org
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tantek
wait a minute. darn forking discussions. http://microformats.org/wiki/opening-hours
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tantek
sigh, time for some merging.
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tantek
since OSM uses the term "opening hours" I'll prefer that and redirect from the other.
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tommorris
will write a brief description of how OSM handles them.
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tommorris
they've formally specced out how to parse the OSM opening_hours tag
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tommorris
and, incidentally, deprecated various complex things based on real world usage
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tommorris
and there's a JS implementation. ;-)
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tantek.com
edited /checkin (-2) "/* indieweb venues */ opening-hours"
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tantek
thanks tommorris - feel free to add said brief description etc. here: http://microformats.org/wiki/opening-hours-formats#OpenStreetMap
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tommorris
yep, just expanding it now.
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tommorris
tantek: OSM opening_hours handles weeks.
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tommorris
week 4-16 Sa, week 50-53 Tu 0:00-24:00
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tommorris
that's a venue that's open on Saturdays on weeks 4-16 of the year and Tuesdays on weeks 50-53. ;-)
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tantek
interesting. how "international" is the OSM community? (I mean, as opposed to "English-speaking-world-centric")
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tommorris
well, it's mostly Western European
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tommorris
it's heavily used in Germany and NL for instance
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tommorris
it's heavily UK based because Steve Coast is British (albeit he is now a Seattle-based Microsoftie)
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tommorris
it's quite heavily used in EU countries, both English speaking and not.
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tommorris
US is weird because there's not so much demand for it
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tommorris
OpenStreetMap usage correlates pretty well with the popularity of cycling.
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tantek
fascinating (re: cycling)
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tommorris
or rather, the need for a map that's not heavily car-centric
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tantek
the US is quite car-centric
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tantek
ok, and there's been no big drama over using English abbreviations of dotw like Sa Tu etc. ?
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tommorris
so, you get cyclists, hikers, motorcyclists, skateboarders/inline skaters etc.
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tommorris
not particularly
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tommorris
in my little rural hamlet, I've added almost all the footpaths. the cycling people tend to like adding all the obscure cycling paths. ;-)
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Loqi
ALMOST ALL THE FOOTPATHS http://loqi.me/63d
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tantek
hahaha
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Loqi
hehe
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tommorris
almosts some verbs.
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tantek
I don't know of any other well established opening-hours like format, so that might a reasonable, "just pick the winner" and make the equivalent microformat approach that I used with hCard and hCalendar.
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tommorris
OpenStreetMap == long-tail maps.
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tommorris
Steve Coast "I stopped keeping track when they started adding base jumping sites"
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tantek
in the same way, Foursquare's user-created venue database is much better (more thorough, more up to date) than the venue databases that companies buy/sell, and for example, all the corporate maps tools use.
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tantek
Google is sort of trying with letting businesses create their own venues for themselves on maps, but it doesn't really help much in practice - nearly all Foursquare venues are created by someone who is *not* an authority for that venue, just someone local to it>
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tantek
s/>/.
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Loqi
tantek meant to say: Google is sort of trying with letting businesses create their own venues for themselves on maps, but it doesn't really help much in practice - nearly all Foursquare venues are created by someone who is *not* an authority for that venue, just someone local to it.
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tantek
will be interesting to see if/when OSM venues surpasses Foursquare venues in comprehensiveness, recency, etc. A better venue creation/editing UI would probably help.
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tantek
hey barnabywalters - we're talking about indieweb checkins and venues
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barnabywalters
evening tantek
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barnabywalters
reads the logs
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tommorris
tantek: bulk import/merge is where it gets amazing. have I told you about the UK's release of the Food Standards Agency data?
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tantek
um no
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tommorris
every place that is inspected by the government to serve food or drink. in big XML files.
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tommorris
pubs, bars, restaurants, off-licenses (liquor stores), church/community groups/homeless shelters etc.
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tommorris
Sport England also have some data I'm trying to wangle that contains every amateur sports venue.
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barnabywalters
RE OSM editing UIs, I have found Pushpin for iOS to be very nice for POIs, and the latest version allows for editing of (but not creation of) areas too
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barnabywalters
it even manages to make all the tags fairly straightforward
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tommorris
Vespucci on Android is getting better… but it's no Foursquare. ;-)
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barnabywalters
and yes, IRC seems to be neglected by a lot of indiewebcamp folks
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barnabywalters
tommorris: so vespucci is an editor or a checkin app? Does foursquare do venue editing as well?
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tommorris
Vespucci is an OSM editor for Android
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tommorris
but in terms of the use case of "add the place I'm currently sitting in", it's hardly as friendly as Foursquare
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tantek.com
edited /checkin (+131) "hours that a customers-only bathroom is open"
(view diff)
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barnabywalters
what about it is less friendly? less auto-filling of data?
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tommorris
well, you have to have an OpenStreetMap username. typing it in is fiddly
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tommorris
and you have to understand the tag formats and stuff
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tantek
tommorris - how about hours that a customers-only bathroom is open? https://foursquare.com/item/50df576ae4b0073ea8eaa235
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barnabywalters
oh, right. Well, with pushpin you obviously have to login, but IIRC it provides a UI for that, and it has a readable, searchable list of common tags
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tommorris
definitely useful. not something we've added to openstreetmap
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tantek
(at a gas station where the pumps themselves are self-serve and 24hr)
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tantek
well in case it helps - there's a real world example for you
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tommorris
yep, will add to the OSM wiki
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tantek
(have no idea about the "process" for adding things to the OSM format system)
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tantek
(but I figure that URLs to real world examples are likely to help)
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tommorris
mostly you just start tagging it in the most sensible way you can, then document on the wiki
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tommorris
toilets:opening_hours ;-)
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tommorris
goes to add it to the map.
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barnabywalters
foursquare’s 7.2/10 people like this place is weird, if statistically accurate
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barnabywalters
usually when referring to people I try to keep the numbers whole ;)
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tantek
tommorris - so you just organically add stuff and people sort it out later?
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tommorris
well, in that case, the garage already exists
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tantek
are there naming conventions, how do divergent tags for the same thing get converged?
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tommorris
well, people use taginfo.openstreetmap.org to see the usage of tags
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tantek
and how do collisions get sorted out? the same tag being used for two different things.
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tommorris
well, ultimately, tags that are used to draw the map get sort of formalised by the mapnik developers
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tommorris
collisons sort of get sorted out eventually by documenting on-wiki, finding things that don't quite fit
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tommorris
so, a real world example. we have a tag to mark that a bar is a gay bar. gay=yes
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tommorris
so you do amenity=bar & gay=yes
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tommorris
but that's not very descriptive. on the to-do list is to separate it out and have a separate tag for lesbian bars. until that happens, that just goes in the "note" tag.
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tantek
why gay=yes rather than category:gay ?
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tommorris
cos too much namespacery requires people to remember them
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tantek
sorry, I meant
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tantek
why gay=yes rather than category=gay
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tommorris
for future extensibility
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tantek
where you can obviously have multiple categories
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tantek
uh, really? so every category is a boolean?
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tommorris
so, in general, you can tag something as 'yes' and also as more specific cases
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tantek
weird
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tommorris
no, it's a bit of a clusterfuck
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tommorris
so, there's amenity=[type]
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tommorris
shopping=[type]
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tommorris
like amenity=restaurant
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tommorris
but if, in a slightly weird circumstance, you wanted to say "well, this is an amenity, but I don't know what", you could do amenity=yes
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tommorris
it's one of those "it all sort of works" things rather than something that' sbeen well thought out.
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tommorris
worse is better.
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tantek
also I noticed that you provided the URL / attribution to me in the comment on http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/14456355 but not the citation of the Foursquare Tip URL (which had photo etc.) - does OSM not do/need as much "citation" thoroughness as Wikipedia? Or is there a tacit policy of not linking to silo data for fear of polluting OSM?
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tommorris
yeah, linking to Foursquare would be a very good way to get people going "WTF?"
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tantek
I'm not sure "worse is better" is true in all axes of format development. If worse means a ton of crap gets added, then worse is worse. Simpler (but less expressive and thus "worse") does tend to be better in that regard.
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tantek
ok, so if I had posted that on my own indieweb venue URL for Chevron, then you could have cited that
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tommorris
yeah. ;-)
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tantek
a-ha, now we're getting somewhere
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tommorris
so, there's a source tag, which a lot of people use. I ought to use it.
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tommorris
and a source:url tag for pointing directly to a URL
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tantek
because then it's up to *me* whether I want to cite (or syndicate out to) Foursquare for the tip about the bathroom hours from my indieweb venue URL for Chevron
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tantek
then any OSM user can cite my indieweb venue URL without worrying that they're citing a silo URL.
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tantek
so OSM content needs a level of silo-source-deniability
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tommorris
well, sure, the problem is one of copyright.
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tantek
sort of - I mean, I created the content, so I own it.
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tantek
and obv I'm ok with contributing it to OSM, or having you do so
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tommorris
EU though. database copyright.
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tommorris
Foursquare would have database copyright for everything in Foursquare even if it's user contributed
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tantek
weird
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tommorris
but if you posted it on tantek.com, it wouldn't be.
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tantek
so that's another reason to POSSE rather than PESOS then
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tommorris
it's one of the major problems with licensing.
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tommorris
Creative Commons never really thought about database copyright
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tantek
anything you PESOS, you may be violating the database copyright of the silo you PESOS'd from.
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tantek
even if *you* contributed it to the silo in the first place.
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tommorris
the reason the British government had to write the Open Government License is because database copyright isn't done properly by CC
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tommorris
it'd probably be okay if you did it.
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tantek
I thought CC0 did handle it
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tommorris
CC0 can't force someone to not put it in a database which they then lock up under database copyright.
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tantek
CC0 is not about forcing negatives
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tommorris
twitter is an interesting example: it's quite possible that individual tweets are not copyrightable.
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tantek
CC0 is about explicitly disclaiming rights
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tommorris
but the collection of tweets would probably have a database copyright.
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tommorris
this is one of the ways that Europe has more fucked-up copyrights than the US
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tommorris
you stack together enough of other people's stuff and you get to magically own the collection so long as you put some creativity into building the stack.
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tommorris
I believe the timezone info database had this problem.
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tantek.com
edited /POSSE (+236) "/* Advantages */ ownership"
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tommorris
+1 on that. ;-)
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tommorris
knows far too much about how copyright is broken.
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tommorris
so, an example of a kind of database copyright: charts. as in Top 40 albums, that kind of thing.
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tommorris
not copyrightable in the US. but copyrightable in a lot of other countries.
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tantek.com
edited /PESOS (+662) "/* Disadvantages */ Possible loss or restriction of ownership"
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tantek
that http://indiewebcamp.com/PESOS#Disadvantages sound about right tommorris? tried to paraphrase what you said, feel free to improve.
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tommorris
yeah, database copyright doesn't affect individual entries, but it deals with large collections of individual works. it's arguable whether, say, all the tweets posted by the same user would be affected by DB copyright
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tantek
hence I used the word "may"
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tommorris
yep, that looks okay
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tommorris
that reminds me, next time I see Geoff Brigham, Wikimedia's General Counsel, I must ask him whether there would be some arrangement to have a stock of lawyers from non-profit free culture type organisations like Wikimedia, Creative Commons etc. to help answer these kinds of things authoritatively.
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tommorris
tantek: also, you asked whether you need sourcing and stuff for OSM. the answer is "broadly no". I try to provide photos for most of the things I add, but I frequently add stuff from local knowledge.
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tommorris
certainly for roads and other things like that, a publicly available GPX file is kind of expected
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tommorris
but for adding venues like bars and restaurants, doing it from memory or whatever is usually fine
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tantek
ok, just a habit for me I guess. I like to have citations for things.
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tantek
(kind of obsessed about it actually, though despite that, not a very good/frequent Wikipedia contributor).
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tommorris
indeed.
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tommorris
it's sort of a joke amongst wikipedians. before xmas, a few wikipedia admins got together and exchanged reliable sources.
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tommorris
your 4sq tips are useful. mine are sarcastic.
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tommorris
tip for London Bridge station "buy a jetpack to escape station during rush hours."
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tantek
I've written a few Foursquare "performance art" tips, usually only when they seem quite necessary.
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tommorris
also, for opening-hours: it almost feels like definition lists might be the answer.
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tommorris
<dl class="opening-hours"><dt>Monday</dt><dd>09:00 - 17:00</dd> ...
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tantek
if you ever visit that venue, it will immediately make sense upon exiting.
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tantek
tommorris - so the problem with that for opening hours is that "Monday" is to English-centric
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tantek
that markup doesn't work for non-english sites
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tantek
we're likely going to need some approximation of the shorthand syntax from OSM plus how to wrap the "user visible text" on the page
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tommorris
it's something I'm going to have to deal with quite soon. I'm thinking of proposing that the RDF Core group completely rewrite the way they deal with datatypes.
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tantek
oh, just because you want to torture them with moving piles of sand?
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tantek
regardless, don't let me discourage you regarding the markup
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tommorris
no, just because datatypes were the most back-of-a-cigarette-packet thing.
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tommorris
and aren't fitting well with real world usage.
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tantek
that's perfectly reasonable POSH markup for opening hours, and if you were to publish examples like that, we'd use it to inform a potential opening hours property or format or other markup pattern for microformats.
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tantek
if it works for your site, use it. then we'll use that as data :)
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tommorris
yep. I know how-to-play. ;-)
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tantek
haha - right, *that* problem with datatypes.
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tommorris
so, an example:
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tantek
it was a misapplication of a CS-world modeling concept to a real-world-modeling format.
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tommorris
<#eiffelTower> <#cost> "650000"^^xsd:int .
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tantek
there's an even simpler answer
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tommorris
The Eiffel Tower cost 6.5 million francs in 1880.
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tantek
no data types
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tommorris
This is a real world problem that projects like Wikidata face.
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tantek
sure, but some CS-based type system is not the answer for any "real world problem" of data expression
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tommorris
The datatype should be "1880-era French francs" not "integer"
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tantek
well, we did finally come up with one datatype that was worth explicitly expressing - time
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tantek
hence we now have a <time> element in HTML5
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tantek
a pretty darn good and expressive one
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tantek
and one completely disconnected from the RDF/XMLSchema notions of time.
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tantek
because <time> is based on real world research into publishing
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tantek
not CS / databases
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tantek
I don't trust anyone who is starting with CS/databases to get anything right about data types for the real world.
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tantek
so yeah, time, strings. good enough for now. the rest we leave to the "application layer" :)
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tommorris
indeed, so my plan is to basically propose we pretty much deprecate XSD datatypes in RDF and replace them with an actual sensible solution for actual use cases which need some kind of typing, which is basically expressing units of measure.
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tommorris
things like temperature
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tantek
physics is not a bad start
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tommorris
saying "30" is an integer is not telling me anything useful.
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tantek
since that's based in real world examples ;)
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tantek
as opposed to math/compsci
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tommorris
telling me that "30" is in USD or EUR is telling me something useful.
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tantek
which is based in imaginary worlds
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tantek
anyway - sounds like a painful set of interactions. good luck.
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tommorris
well, fortunately, I don't have to convince the W3C to standardise it. I just need to make a compelling case to RDF users that they should ignore the W3C until they implement it. ;-)
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tommorris
and forge some URIs for actually useful things rather than badly-specified XSD nonsense.
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tantek.com
edited /PESOS (+55) "/* Disadvantages */"
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