Comments for Tom's Thoughts

Comment on BT really are clinically insane by Tom

Tom — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:14:43 +0000

If I want to write to the chairman (and I’ve done it in the past when companies have annoyed me) then I’ll do so at 81 Newgate Street…

Comment on BT really are clinically insane by Bo Bowler

Bo Bowler — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:04:33 +0000

Better still to write to their Chairman and invade HIS privacy:

Sir Michael Rake
Chairman, BT Plc
[ home address removed ]

Comment on Redesigning the OpenStreetMap Web Site by Andrew Zaborowski

Andrew Zaborowski — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:20:11 +0000

The http://www.openstreetmap.pl (open in firefox) is an example of a three panel design, I don’t suggest this design be used on the osm.org front page but some ideas could be borrowed. The bottom panel by default shows something along the lines of bestofosm.org (as links), they should probably be customised basen on geoip.

Comment on Redesigning the OpenStreetMap Web Site by Tom

Tom — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:13:52 +0000

There’s no time limit at the moment, but it does expire if you close your browser.

We want to fix that – there’s an open trac ticket for it – but the person that tried ran into some technical problems or something so it hasn’t been done yet.

Comment on Redesigning the OpenStreetMap Web Site by Matt Williams

Matt Williams — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:06:16 +0000

“One issue here is that there are essentially two entirely separate classes of user that the home page needs to address – newcomers who need to be introduced to the project, and existing users who quite likely just want to see the map.”

The solution I see for this is to extend the duration that a user stays logged in (a cookie I guess) to ~30 days since at the moment I seem to need to re-login to the site every time I visit it (unless of course, this is just a browser issue on my end). Once this is more persistent, it would be possible to simply show a different front page for those users who are logged in and those who are new to the site. This is what gitorious.org does and it allows a fancy front page for newcomers but with a functional page for members.

Comment on Redesigning the OpenStreetMap Web Site by Leif

Leif — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:10:09 +0000

“A routing engine – not because we want to be a full service end user map site…”

As a fairly new OSM contributer I feel this issue of being a ‘full service end user map site’ is the make or break point. Personally I think new users would be more compelled to make better maps if they could see how it directly benefits them, which is…using the maps.

Posed differently…would wikipedia be what it is today if users could contribute to articles but then browsing the data was limited in functionality and left up to third party sites to implement?

Comment on Research Fail by Gregory Marler

Gregory Marler — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:54:16 +0000

Answer 1. All revisions to the code were major, because some amount of time was spent on them.

Answer 2. Link to code repository logs.

Comment on Contacting British Telecom… by BT: The Unstoppable Phone Spam Machine « Tom's Thoughts

BT: The Unstoppable Phone Spam Machine « Tom's Thoughts — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:25:24 +0000

[...] my last run in with BT when they called me (in breach of the regulations on unsolicited marketing calls) to offer [...]

Comment on Mapzen: First Thoughts by Tom

Tom — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:29:28 +0000

It’s interesting that you say that about the iPhone app as I’d been told (I’ve never used it myself) that it was much better than the web app.

Comment on Mapzen: First Thoughts by Tim Morley

Tim Morley — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:24:08 +0000

Glad I’m not the only one giving up on what has been an uphill struggle to get to grips with Mapzen. Apart from being prettier, I haven’t found anything that I can do quicker or more easily in Mapzen than I can in Potlatch, and like you I’ve found plenty of things that I want to do and I simply can’t.

I’m afraid I’ve even struggled to get any use out of the accompanying iPhone app. It *should* make it loads easier to add POIs while out and about; as it is, every time I try it I spend five minutes or so poking at the interface wondering what’s going on, then just open MotionX GPS instead and record waypoints instead. Even though I then have to transcribe them onto OSM later, it’s still a net time saving. (