I am glad to be back after some time,been busy with other important things,but my silence should not be mistaken for lack of interest in GIS.I was almost being crucified for not updating my blog but from now onwards i will form a habit of doing so more often so as to appease the GIS starved masses out there.
So far so good with my journey of gaining insight about web mapping thanks to my great friend Joseph and my online pal Wanjohi Kibui .I cannot overemphasize the instrumental role the two have played in encouraging me and advising me on which platforms to use to put my maps on the web.
Particularly thankful to Joseph for 'singing' to me continuously about web mapping as early as first year.Back then i didn't have any interest,let alone knowing what it was.
I decided to try it out after my 2nd year internal attachment,gaining some insightful wisdom from Wanjohi Kibui,who went to an extent of sending me some books to kick start this journey.Forever thankful......
Now to the business of the day:
Today i will make my hands dirty with a practical session where i will show you how to get shapefiles from the Open Street Map(OSM) .Getting data out of OSM presents more technical challenges than putting data into it.
I used the spatial manager software to do this(download Spatial manager).Of course there are other methods of doing this e.g using QGIS but personally i prefer doing it this way.
1.Visit Open Street Map(OSM) and zoom in to the area of interest.I choose UoN main campus
With a few clicks,we have gotten the necessary data and this has saved us the process of doing the donkey work of digitization.
My next article will be on 'Demystifying Openlayers Application programming Interface'.It actually plays a pivotal role in my web mapping venture and saw it fit to disect it so that any one who hasn't had a hands on experience with it can do so or for those doubting its capabilities can have second thoughts.
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