The Future of Communications is Happening Here

I've been blogging about the cool things we're doing at CloudMade. (Our editor is almost ready. AS3 FTW!) But as the chairman of the board of OSMF, I am often asked: "Steve, what are the cool things in the OSMF pipeline? Any surprises in store for us on the community side?"

Now I can't of course share our full 5-year plan of world domination with you (Nick came up with the fashionable OSM 2014 tag for it) but a key pillar of this is going to be a radical communications revamp. You have already seen how we're gradually replacing mailing lists with telephone conferences. But there's more! I have heard your complaints about the Wiki and they are all true - the hardware is meagre, the software is crap, and the users, well, I've promised Nick not to throw the talk-de trouble makers any more bones. The good news is, we're going to replace the Wiki with a full-colour, monthly membership magazine that is delivered to your door, free of charge, courtesy of CloudMade sponsoring! I have three CloudMade designers working round the clock on this assignment and their beta results are awsome. You'll absolutely love the centrefold design they came up with. I'll let Nick be the editor-in-chief and he has promised me space for a monthly philosophy column.

And before the naysayers complain: There's absolutely no reason to be worried. We will carry at least half a page of letters to the editor. In each issue. Promise.

The CloudMade difference

Sometimes people ask me "Steve, what does CloudMade bring to the OpenStreetMap party that OSM can't do for itself?". And my answer is, hot babes.



The dude on the left is old-school OpenStreetMap. The hot babe is CloudMade. Being committed OSMers, they are of course both awsome and both have seriously awsome names, but only one of them looks like Richard Stallman.

(If you do know how to crowdsource hot babes, perhaps you could tell our product development team. We think it could be the killer app for the Slashdot crowd.)

How awsome am I?

So not many of you know that CloudMade also has an awsome data analysis team that works on future geo industry trends. I don't mind admitting I was once a bit of a n00b at all of this so when Nick told me "we need some serious geo intel", I started opening up our PCs and ripping out the AMDs.

But all that's changed and we now have dudes working on what's happening before it happens. I'm going to be announcing the first such product at our London launch event this evening but you lucky guys get to see it first.

So we like to start with big overview stuff, and this first product is a swingometer assessing the strength of the geo industry. Obviously I don't want to give away too much about the extreme analysis magic behind it but suffice it to say that if you're following the latest in SteveC goodness you'll already have read the source..... and it's FULLY compliant.

Hey--if you're reading this by RSS or planet openstreetmap you'll need to open the FSC blog for the full awsome swingometer effect.

Moar products!

[Nick - check with Matt or one of the Ukrainian cool kids I’m using the meme right - okay thanks bye!!!]

So our SF launch was amazing, check out the twitter buzz. http://search.twitter.com/search?q=cloudmade

Very few technical hitches, considering. I did ask Andy Allen why the cycle route planner sent me on circuitous routes up mountains, over fences, down alleyways and along dirt tracks, but he informed me that Sustrans routes are meant to be like that, and furthermore could I please get back to pestering Mick Jagger’s PA as I was distracting him from some important blogging he had to do.

Anyway I’ll let the products speak for themselves.

Routing



CM routing is moar detailed than any other routing engine available! Imagine the arguments you can have with your girlfriend when she turns left after only 32m. (If you had a girlfriend.)



See the power of crowd-sourced map data! You wouldn't get results of this quality with Google.

Style editor



See what you can do with our style editor!

Geocoding and geosearch



CM search is the only product on the market that matches the awsome speed of the OSM namefinder!

Oh yeah.

Remember how Google announced nothing of significance at Where 2.0 but then dropped the bomb a month later? I’m just saying, is all.

You'll need this

So it occurs to me that some of you following my world-changing presentation via satellite linkup might not understand how we work at CM.

Juha has approved that we release our organogram to the public. I think it makes it clear who does the real work.

CloudMade make blogs differently

YES YES YES it’s my big day YES YES YES

PUMP. HARDER. PUMP. HARDER.

TWENTY. TWENTY-ONE. TWENTY-TWO.

I’m SO psyched. I’m so FUCKING psyched. I am SO fucking hot right now.

Punchbag. Gimme that punchbag.

*thud* - Google
*thud* - Microsoft
*thud* - Yahoo [Hang on, don’t we like them? - Nick]

I rise above the haters. Today you see Steve Rampant, rising glorious from the flames, in excelsis mapso. I am revived. Maps course through my veins.

I think no longer about trivialities. Mails and Rails, patches, Potlatchs and dispatches.rb. All that is for the worker ants.

I can map using only my consciousness and my clearly expressed desire. One tweet and the world invisibly shapes itself around my will. I merely have to say the word MAPS and another city falls into line. MAPS. MAPS. You see. Oceans fall and mountains drift as SRTM voids shape reality. MAPS.

Tomorrow there are two realities, three realities, four realities all expressed through my Style Editor. Tomorrow the world routes itself through the highways, byways, roads and rails of my vision. Earth shall fall and Cloud shall envelop all the lands.

PUMP. HARDER. PUMP. HARDER. MAPS. MAPS. PUMP. HARDER.

place=farm, turkeys=yes

Season's greetings to all. Promise me to map as at least as much in 2009 as you did in 2008, and I promise to let you peek into the world of the rich and famous every now and then. We didn't get to finish OpenSantaMap in time (see Wiki page) so you probably still need to be on Google maps if you want anything but I'm sure Christmas '09 will be ruled by OSM.

Keep up the good work!

Yours
FSC.