Idea Lab

How to Contribute to OpenStreetMap and Grow the Open Geodata Set

by Bonnie Bogle
2010 Knight News Challenge Winner

Hundreds of delegates from government, civil society, and business gathered in Brasilia recently for the first Open Government Partnership meetings since the inception of this initiative. Transparency, accountability, and open data as fundamental building blocks of a new, open form of government were the main issues debated. With the advent of these meetings, we took the opportunity to expand an open data set by adding street names to OpenStreetMap. Getting ready to survey the Cruzeiro neighborhood in Brasilia. OpenStreetMap, sometimes dubbed the "Wikipedia of maps," is an open geospatial database. Anyone can go to openstreetmap.org, create an account, and add...

• April 30, 2012
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Introducing MapBox Streets, a New World Map Powered by Open Data

by Bonnie Bogle
2010 Knight News Challenge Winner

We recently released MapBox Streets, a zoomable web map of the world that's powered entirely by open data through the OpenStreetMap project. Our main focus with MapBox Streets was to provide a beautiful street map alternative to the ones normally seen online, primarily Google Maps, and to make it incredibly easy for people to start using it on their websites. We created a step-by-step tutorial on how to use MapBox Streets on a website and add data to it using our open-source map design studio TileMill or pulling from an external source, like a database or API (application programming interface)....

• March 15, 2012
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TileMill Now Lets You Design Maps for the Web on Windows

by Bonnie Bogle
2010 Knight News Challenge Winner

TileMill, the free and open-source design studio for creating beautiful web maps, is now available for download on Windows. With the latest release, the map-making tool is fully operational on the three leading operating systems: Windows, Mac, and Linux. With Windows still dominating the marketplace, this is a huge development that will open the door to many more users being able to use TileMill to make custom maps. This was possible because Node.js, the blazingly fast open-source software that's at the core of TileMill, recently gained Windows support. Quick Start To get started making custom maps with Tilemill, download the...

• January 31, 2012
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Mapping the Story of Climate Change

by Bonnie Bogle
2010 Knight News Challenge Winner

For this week's climate meetings in Durban, the World Bank released a series of maps showing the predicted impact of climate change on the world between now and 2100. The data is dismal. If climate change continues unmitigated as it has for the past century, temperatures around the world will increase 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 -- the equivalent increase between today's climate and the last ice age. This change won't impact the world equally, with local changes varying from almost none to more than 10 degrees Celsius, depending on scenario, location and season. All of these...

• December 8, 2011
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How to Design Fast, Interactive Maps Without Flash

by Bonnie Bogle
2010 Knight News Challenge Winner

Until recently if you wanted to create a fast interactive map to use on your website you had two main options - design it in Flash, or use Google. With the prevalence of mobile devices, for many users Flash isn't an option, leaving Google and a few competitors (like Bing). But we are developing open source technologies in this space that provide viable alternatives for serving fast interactive maps online - ones that often give users more control over map design and the data displayed on it. TileMill, our open source map design studio, now provides interactivity in the latest...

• April 22, 2011
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Map Mashup Shows Broadband Speeds for Schools in U.S.

by Bonnie Bogle
2010 Knight News Challenge Winner

The Department of Education (ED) recently launched Maps.ed.gov/Broadband an interactive map that shows schools and their proximity to broadband Internet access speeds across the country. This is an important story for ED, an agency that has a stated goal that all students and teachers have access to a sufficient infrastructure for learning -- which nowadays includes a fast Internet connection. The map is based on open data released last month by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). As you can see below, the result is a custom map that shows a unique story -- how schools' Internet access compares across the...

• April 1, 2011
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