Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Data hackers make Melbourne hipster map - ABC Online


"You've probably never heard of it."


That's the classic hipster phrase, but the Open Knowledge Foundation have a plan to make it obsolete, at least in Melbourne - the city often called Australia's hipster capital.


The foundation's Maia Sauren came up with the plan to map out 'everything that is hipster' in Melbourne and make it publicly available on the internet.


A group of about a dozen open data enthusiasts made a start on the map and plan to continue work on the project in the near future.


Steve Bennett created the proof of concept using Open Street Map data, an open source alternative to commercial products such as Google Maps or Apple Maps.


"It works just the same as Google maps except, in a lot of cases, a little bit better," says Steve.


"It's built by a community of people who care about maps and they can add data about stuff that's interesting to them."


Like a cartographic Wikipedia, all of the data in Open Street Maps is created by individuals who donate their time to ensuring the maps are detailed and correct.


"I had a friend Rob Hutton who used to ride around on a motorbike late at night with a GPS," says Steve Bennett.


"There's a guy whose username is 'Alex on the Bus' and I think he commutes to and from from Melbourne each day from Geelong and he spends that whole time mapping stuff."


"It's him that's responsible for adding all the bus routes around Melbourne and all the tram routes and lots of that really painstaking but really valuable data."


The hipster map workshops are being run as a way for people to learn more about mapping.


But isn't anything on a hipster map immediately too well known to be considered hipster?


"Absolutely," says Maia Sauren with a smile.


"The moment we make this map we've actually stolen all the hipster from everyone else," she says.


"We've actually drained the lifeblood of a whole heap of people with skinny jeans."


The Melbourne Hipster Map is online at hipstermelbourne.org



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