Open Street Map Party and other bits...

[Colin McGregor]

For those on this list who have not heard of Open Street Map, it is a
project to create a geographic database free of any government and/or
corporate entanglements. In other words a wiki style atlas where
any/everybody can go in to add / update geographic data. The project
main page can be seen here:

  http://www.openstreetmap.org/

There is an Open Street Map party being planned for Toronto on October
26. Bring a laptop and/or a GPS receiver to the party. Details to be
seen here:

   wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Canada:Ontario:Toronto

On the above web page there is a note asking people to sign up via
www.meetup.com and/or upcoming.yahoo.com. I have not been able to
locate the sign-up page for meetup.com, and the upcoming site lists
the event as being in North York (my first searches were on Toronto,
which turned up nothing). For those wanting to sign-up in advance go
to the following page:

  http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1190490/

Recently I tossed a bunch of article ideas out to the editor of a
Linux oriented publication I have written for (and been published by)
in the past. Of the ideas I tossed out the only one the editor went
for was "An Introduction to Open Street Map". So, over the next 2
months I need to pull together 2,500 words of newbee material (not a
real issue :-) ). Now, I have been offered a short term loan of a
portable battery powered GPS. But I am still on the lookout for a
portable GPS that I can run independent of my laptop (currently the
only GPS I have is a unit that came with a copy of Microsoft's
"Streets and Trips 2006" (yes in the last two months I have bought a
Microsoft software package, only to toss the software, and keep the
electronics that came with the software :-) ) ).

So, anyone have suggestions as to an Open Street Map usable battery
powered GPS that is as inexpensive as possible?

Thanks.

Colin McGregor
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists