2011 was a pretty good year for the OpenStreetMap project in the Philippines. Aside from the usual Mapping Parties, the community has organized or participated in several other events, some of them outside the Philippines. 2011 also saw the release of a more improved and usable OSM Philippine Garmin map, and OSM contributors made 2011 the best year in terms of increase of data in the Philippines (thanks to Bing).

By many respects, 2011 was the most active year for the Philippine OpenStreetMap community. 2012 will have quite a bit of a trouble topping the high bar that the previous year has set, but it’s a challenge that I’m certainly looking forward to.

Mapping Parties and Research Papers

We had four Mapping Parties in 2011. All of them were held in Metro Manila and the the target areas were:

• The Scout Area of Quezon City (February 12)

• The whole town of Pateros (June 11)

• The southwestern portion of Makati (July 23)

• The area in and around Greenhills in Mandaluyong and San Juan (December 17)

Of the four, the QC Scout Area and the Greenhills Mapping Parties had the most participants, while the Pateros event had, in my opinion, the most impact in terms of increased coverage. You can check out how the a portion of Pateros was improved in the following visualization.

Aside from these Mapping Parties, Maning and Rally also attended a mini mapping event organized by Philip Paar, a German who was doing academic research on mapping slum areas. The event took place in mid January 2011 and the target was the Gawad Kalinga Telus Village in Quezon City. Philip visited Manila a couple of times before, mapping three other Gawad Kalinga villages, and for the Telus Village event, Maning and Rally participated to provide a local’s perspective.

Philip has published his research together with his co-researcher . You can check two of the papers they wrote in the following links.

• “Low-Cost Mapping and Publishing Methods for Landscape Architectural Analysis and Design in Slum-Upgrading Projects”

• “There is no App for that—Ardous fieldwork under mega urban conditions” (PDF)

Conferences, Hackdays, and Meetups

On September 17, OpenStreetMap Philippines gave a workshop at Software Freedom Day 2011, which was organized by the Computer Professionals Union. The workshop had around 50 student attendees and we gave them an overview of OpenStreetMap and had them try their hand at editing the data via Potlatch2.

In 2011, Maning started to organize the Philippine chapter of OSGeo, an international group that promotes the use of free and open source GIS software. OSGeo and OpenStreetMap enjoy a close relationship in many countries and there is actually some overlap in members between the two. And so during OSGeo Philippines’ third meeting held on December 3, I gave overview of OSM to the attendees.

In addition to these local events, Maning became the first ever Filipino (based in the Philippines) to attend State of the Map (SOTM), the annual conference for OpenStreetMap contributors, users, and supporters. In 2011, SOTM was held in Denver, Colorado from September 9 to 11 and Maning fortunately got a travel scholarship which lets him travel and attend the conference for free. Maning gave a short presentation on the state of OSM in the Philippines.

Maning also attended a regional FOSS4G in Tokyo and Osaka in Japan in November. FOSS4G is the OSGeo counterpart of OpenStreetMap’s SOTM, and while Maning wasn’t able to attend the global FOSS4G event in Denver (right after SOTM) he was able to attend the Japan conference where he saw how active the Japanese mapping and GIS communities were. Incidentally, SOTM 2012 will be held in Tokyo.

Finally, several OSM contributors met in Maning’s office on February 18 for the Garmin Hackday. While no actual hacking occurred that day, lots of ideas were discussed and many of them were implemented to create a much improved OSM-PH Garmin map.

A better Garmin map

As mentioned, an improved Garmin map based on OSM data in the Philippines was developed using some of the ideas shared during the Hackday, and was officially released on July 26. (Garmin is a brand of GPS navigation devices that is quite popular in the Philippines and the OSM Philippines community has been providing maps for Garmin devices since the late 2007.)

Among the improvements include better address search which was made possible because of new features added to mkgmap, the software we use to compile the Garmin map from OSM data. The map also had a fresher style with a lot more types of POIs (points of interest) shown. You can check out all the improvements on Maning’s blog post.

Impressive data growth

The numbers speak for themselves:

Data statistics as of January 3, 2011:

• Number of nodes: 1,528,760

• Number of ways: 127,544

• Number of relations: 645

• Number of contributors: 701

• Total road length: 59,969 km

Data statistics as of December 28, 2011 (with percentage increase in parentheses):

• Number of nodes: 2,778,737 (82%)

• Number of ways: 283,621 (122%)

• Number of relations: 1,769 (174%)

• Number of contributors: 1,238 (77%)

• Total road length: 91,461 km (53%)

The growth is quite impressive. All five data points have shown an increase of more than half and some numbers have even more than doubled compared to a year ago!

A large portion of this growth is definitely due to Bing Maps allowing OpenStreetMap to trace from it’s available satellite imagery. We still haven’t exhausted the possibilities of extracting data from Bing so expect further growth in 2012.

Image credits: Map by ITO World (CC-BY-SA 2.0). Photos by Maning Sambale, Philip Paar, Harry Wood (CC-BY-SA), Eugene Villar, and an unknown photographer at FOSS4G. Other maps from data by OSM contributors.

I was browsing the map section of Bestsellers in Robinsons Galleria in early October and I discovered this CD software named Philippines DigiMap (v2.0.0) produced by a company named Mannasoft Technology Corporation. Being the map geek that I am, I was initially intrigued by this product, which when installed (Windows only, I presume) supposedly lets you browse a digital map of Metro Manila and search for POIs (points of interest). Unfortunately, its 300-peso price turned me off. But the clincher was this notice printed on the back of the packaging:

Upon installation, Philippines DigiMap may be used for 15 days. To extend use, activation code is required. Please call or email at the contact info below.

Is this for real? Is this software so good that I need to get it activated? I’m not even sure if the activation is free (and I’m too lazy to contact them to find out). Besides, in this age of Google Maps and OpenStreetMap, both of which are free, why would I pay 300 pesos to get a digital map that I likely couldn’t use in a mobile setting, and can’t use for real-time navigation? It’s true that you need an Internet connection to browse Google Maps, but there are tons of offline solutions that are often free. I thought that Periplus’ Metro Manila Atlas was a not worth its price, but Mannasoft’s Philippines DigiMap takes the cake.

Mannasoft actually has a website which seems to contain the same map data: www.directorymanila.net. I browsed their online maps on that site and I was quite unimpressed. They used the KabeetMaps model of only showing a map of each city in Metro Manila one at a time instead of the continuous and seamless map that Google and OSM provides. In addition, I tried the search functionality for their Makati map and I couldn’t get it to work at all. And oh, their street network is wrong in many places and outdated in others.

Well, if there’s one nice thing that I can say, it’s the fact that they provided floor plans of Glorietta so that you can locate interior shops. This is actually a nice and almost unique feature that they could capitalize on. Unfortunately, their Glorietta floor plan is also outdated, they even show the shops in Glorietta 1 and 2 which are long closed and gone.

Oh yeah, here’s the final nail in the coffin. It seems that their GIS and cartography solution is so poor that they couldn’t even make their own overview map of Metro Manila (as seen on the front cover of their packaging). I made that Metro Manila map for Wikipedia back in 2003 and I could definitely recognize the tell-tale shape and colors. See the visualization below to compare. Look especially at the outline of Makati and the northern border of Valenzuela.

If a company had the gall to steal a map somebody else made without following the generous open license or even providing any attribution, then I think they couldn’t be trusted to provide an accurate and updated map, much less entrust them with 300 pesos of your money.

More than a year ago, I blogged about the very detailed 3D buildings in U.P. Diliman that can be explored in Google Earth. And a year before that, Mike Gonzalez shared his top 10 3D Philippine sights in Google Earth. Well, I recently installed Google Earth 6 and decided to check out the current state of the 3D buildings and models in Metro Manila. The verdict? I’m quite impressed!

In the past couple of years, several Google Earth modelers have managed to add tons of 3D building models in Metro Manila, especially in the Makati Central Business District, Bonifacio Global City, and Ortigas Center. While the coverage is far from complete, what’s there is already quite adequate. Going into the details, a lot of the buildings need a lot more improvement, but in terms of showing a bird’s eye view, it’s sufficient enough.

Caveat: some modelers are so enthusiastic, they even provided models of buildings that are still under construction or even under planning! So don’t take these models at face value.

Shown above is a screenshot of the Makati CBD with Mount Makiling on the horizon. PBCom Tower, currently the country’s tallest building, is quite visible.

Next up is Bonifacio Global City. Here you can see a complete model of the Trion Towers of which currently only 1 tower is under construction. Visible along the left edge of the screenshot, is a portion of the Buendia-Kalayaan Flyover model that someone helpfully provided.

Ortigas Center is looking quite impressive with nice detailed models of SM Megamall and Shangri-La Plaza Mall to complement the skyscrapers. I actually like the detailed model of the transmission tower on top of Strata 2000.

And for fun, I tried to recreate a photo of the Makati CBD from the Ayala Avenue–Makati Avenue intersection to see how good the models are. Shown below is the original photo taken by Bernardo Agulo. And below that is the same scene as seen in Google Earth, matched to the best of my abilities. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s quite impressive, don’t you think?

So far, the top highlight of 2011 for me was my recent trip to Israel where I attended Wikimania 2011, held in the beautiful seaside city of Haifa. Wikimania is the annual conference for Wikipedians (and Wikimedians) and it is held in different cities every year. Last year it was held in Gdansk, Poland and next year it will be in Washington, D.C. I applied for a scholarship to attend this year’s Wikimania and I was fortunate to be accepted. The scholarship enabled me to go to Israel with practically all-expenses paid. The only thing I needed was pocket money and some transportation fare.

One other good thing was that Filipinos don’t need visas to enter Israel. I believe this is because the Philippines was the only Asian nation to support the creation of the State of Israel back in 1947. Thus, there would be no visas to worry about (which was one thing that torpedoed my chance to visit Amsterdam for free two years ago).

However, I won’t be talking about the conference or Israel for this blog post. What I want to share are my experiences during the flights to and from Israel because they were quite interesting in themselves.

Itinerary and Firsts

There’s no direct flight between Israel and the Philippines, and there is no single airline that flies between Manila (MNL: Ninoy Aquino International Airport [NAIA]) and Tel Aviv (TLV: Ben Gurion International Airport) even with stopovers. So flying to and from Israel meant that I had to stop somewhere and change airlines along the way.

I had my flights booked via the travel agency contracted by the conference organizers. I was originally given an itinerary via Hong Kong (HKG: Hong Kong International Airport) for both the departure and arrival flights from/to Manila. But because I wasn’t amenable with the departure flight schedule, I requested the friendly travel agent to book me a later flight. She got me a flight flying through Bangkok (BKK: Suvarnabhumi Airport) and I accepted it.

The complete itinerary ended up being the following:

• MNL–BKK via Philippine Airlines flight PR 732 (departing at 7:30pm; arriving at 9:50pm; 3:20 flight time)

• BKK–TLV via El Al Israel flight LY 082 (departing at 12:10am; arriving at 7:00am; 10:50 flight time)

• TLV–HKG via El Al Israel flight LY 075 (departing at 10:00pm; arriving at 1:50pm; 10:50 flight time)

• HKG–MNL via Cathay Pacific flight CX 903 (departing at 4:35pm; arriving at 6:40pm; 2:05 flight time)

The decision to fly to Bangkok instead of Hong Kong was a very fortunate one as I will explain later.

Anyway, these flights provided me with a lot of firsts. It was the first time I visited Israel and the Middle East. It was the first time I stepped foot in another Southeast Asian country (though it was only the airport at Bangkok). It was the first time for me to travel solo since my previous international travels were either with family or with co-workers, and the two other Filipino attendees to the conference took different itineraries. This was the first time for me to experience changing airlines as well. A bit surprisingly, it was also the first time for me to fly Philippine Airlines (having flown on local airlines SEAIR and Cebu Pacific before). There are many other firsts, but these are the most significant ones, I think.

Immigration problems

Unexpectedly, I had a bit of a problem with the immigration authorities at NAIA. They had a lot of questions regarding my trip and it seems that being invited to attend a conference in Israel for free was very unusual. They had me go to a special immigration booth to fill up a large embarkation form. I think they wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to Israel to work since I would need to be registered as an Overseas Filipino Worker for that. I assured them that I am already locally employed but couldn’t provide proof since I left my company ID at home because I thought that I didn’t need it.

Eventually, they accepted my story and allowed me to proceed after I presented to them my invitation letter and my flight e-ticket showing that I would not stay in Israel for long.

In contrast to the immigration in Manila, I had very little problem in Tel Aviv. The immigration officer there just asked me the usual questions and I just presented my invitation letter. He then stamped my passport and allowed me to pass. I found this interesting because before that, I noticed a few Filipinos get directed to a special immigration office. One of them was a Filipina who traveled to Tel Aviv to work as a caregiver. I worried that I would suffer the same fate and get interrogated regarding the purpose of my travel to Israel.

By the way, I initially got disconcerted that the officer stamped my passport giving proof that I stepped foot in Israel. Apparently, if any of the several neighboring Arab countries hostile to Israel saw an Israeli passport stamp, they will refuse to let you enter their country, some permanently. So, the usual procedure to avoid that is to request the officer to stamp a piece of paper that will be inserted into the passport and eventually discarded when you leave Israel. But since my passport itself was stamped, I just have to avoid going to those hostile countries until I renew my passport in 2014—not a challenge since I doubt that I would be visiting Arab Middle East anytime soon.

(Then again, they could simply Google my name, discover this blog post, and deduce that I’ve been to Israel, stamp or no stamp. But it’s no big loss since the only mildly interesting city to visit among those Arab countries is Dubai, and there are plenty of other cities around the world more worthy of visit like Paris, London, and New York.)

The Most Secure Airline in the World

One thing that I didn’t know before I embarked on my trip was that El Al Israel, the country’s flag carrier, and the airline that I flew into and out of Tel Aviv, has the unenviable distinction of being the most secure airline in the world. Israel is certainly not the most well-loved country in the region and since flights are a favorite target of terrorists (even way before 9/11), flights by El Al are probably the most targeted by terrorists of any airline in the world.

Fortunately, there has only been one successful hijacking of an El Al Israel flight in the past six decades and that was Flight 426 back in 1968. There were several other attempts but they were foiled by Israel and its allies.

Unfortunately, this means that passengers undergo more stringent screening procedures than normal. They don’t seem quite as crazy as the weird procedures employed by TSA for American flights, but they’re no less inconvenient.

First of all, El Al doesn’t trust baggage screening procedures by destination airports. Thus, they do their own baggage screening. During check-in (such as for my departure flight from TLV), they request you to open your check-in luggage so that they can inspect the contents for themselves. For transit luggages where the passenger is not around (such as for my arrival flight to TLV), they force open the luggages even if they’re locked. I was dismayed to find out when I claimed my luggage in Tel Aviv that they had picked all the locks and even destroyed one my combination locks. The contents were also messed up.

Secondly, they personally interview each and every one of their passengers (Israelis less so, I think). El Al apparently employs expert profilers to identify suspicious passengers. Their questions also try to make sure that a passenger may not unknowingly bring on board a bomb disguised as a gift given by someone else to the passenger to be carried along the flight. (This line of questioning is probably a result of the Hindawi Affair in 1986.) I must say though that these interviewers were very polite and even explained the purposes of their questions (no doubt as another psychological trick to unnerve would-be terrorists).

Lastly, aside from the interview, the airline screens all passengers and their carry-on luggage as well. They have the passengers go through metal detectors and scan for explosive materials. They also screen the contents of the carry-on luggage.

One other inconvenience that I experienced was when I was already seated in the airplane on the flight to Tel Aviv but before take-off. An El Al staff approached me and asked about my Nokia cellphone. She said that they noticed that I had a Nokia phone charger in my checked-in luggage but that the Nokia phone was not there. I showed her that I had the phone with me and she requested that it be checked in. I was confused until I realized only then that they actually forced opened my luggage and that they would be the one to insert my phone into the bag. As a sign of good faith, I also told them about my Sony Ericsson phone that was with me and whose charger was also inside my checked-in luggage but she told me that it was only the Nokia charger that they had a problem with. I think they worry about remotely-controlled bombs using cellphones. But it all seemed completely arbitrary, especially when nobody took notice of my Nokia phone/charger on the departure flight from Tel Aviv. (But maybe because flights from Israel are less of a security risk than flights to Israel.)

All in all, these security procedures are understandable though quite inconvenient. There was actually a suggestion that you should check in four hours before flying with El Al instead of the usual three. I’ve also heard some similar or even worse stories from other conference attendees flying with El Al such as this Spaniard who was forced to leave his laptop in Madrid. Bummer!

One other aspect of El Al flights that I’d like to share is that their flights are longer than comparable flights to Asia with other airlines (I think). The reason? They have to avoid the airspaces of the aforementioned Arab countries.

During the flight to Tel Aviv, I predicted that the jet would just stay well clear of Iran, which is the only country that is currently openly hostile towards Israel. But I was a bit surprised to see the flight avoid every Arab country when I checked the displayed flight map. The flight from Bangkok passed over central India and then dipped south and flew over the Red Sea. The plane then took the Gulf of Aqaba fork of the Red Sea where Israel has a small coastline (sandwiched between Egypt and Jordan). You can see this on the map below.

I thus learned that there is actually another practical significance to Israel’s access to the Red Sea. It allows El Al flights to leave its airspace directly into the airspace over the international waters of the Red Sea. What surprised me still was that the flight still avoided Egypt even though it’s the most friendly of Israel’s neighbors. Heck, El Al even has regular flights to Cairo so I wonder why the plane still avoided that country especially since it would mean that the plane skirts close to Saudi Arabia.

For the return flight to Hong Kong, the flight passed via a more northernly route, over Turkey, the Caucasus region, central Asia, and then finally over China.

As I said earlier, it was fortunate that I had a stopover in Bangkok since this let me experience the two different flight paths of El Al to Asia. As a map geek, I find this geopolitical experience very fascinating.

A month ago on February 19, Wikimedia Philippines held its first Wikipedia Kapihan at Starbucks 32nd and 7th Bonifacio Global City. The Kapihan (Tagalog for “coffee talk”, approximately) is an unstructured meetup to introduce Wikimedia Philippines and the Wikimedia projects (not just Wikipedia) to similar and like-minded organizations. There have been plenty of Wikipedia-related meetups that have happened since 2007, but most of those have been among people who have contributed to Wikipedia. This was the first time that we had a meetup specifically targeted to people outside the editing community.

For the first Kapihan, we were fortunate to be graced by the presence of people from the Philippine IT Organization, which aims to be a pan-Philippine Information Technology organization. Microphone, a new media outlet that aims to cover IT-related events and groups in the Philippines, also attended and provided coverage (and took the photo above).

Over glasses of coffee and sans-caffeine drinks, we answered questions regarding Wikipedia. As expected, there were questions that revolved around Wikipedia’s reliability. My favorite answer to those questions? “How many times have you seen news outlets get things wrong?” Aside from the fact that other media are not always reliable, one big advantage of Wikipedia is that it aims to provide citations in its articles so that readers can check the sources themselves. Furthermore, Wikipedia is open and the editing process is transparent—readers can go to an article’s talk page and the article’s history to see for themselves how the article has evolved over time. It may be messy but you get the real deal.

Another important question was regarding incentives to contributing. Why would people spend time to edit Wikipedia articles? What’s in it for them? My personal answer to that is that it gives me a satisfying feeling that I am sharing what I know to a worldwide audience. The general answer is that you might as well ask why people volunteer for Habitat for Humanity or Gawad Kalinga. It’s all a part of most people’s innate nature to help make a better world.

An aside, I was also interviewed by Microphone and you can see it on their site. This was the second time I participated in a video interview (the first time happened over 3 years ago). I really don’t like how I sound and look on camera.

Hopefully, last month’s Kapihan will just be the first in a series of meetup events to expand the reach of the Wikimedia projects in the Philippines. Hope you get to join the next one! (And if you’re a true-blue Wikipedian, why don’t you join Wikimedia Philippines and attend our next quarterly meeting this April 2?)

I guess it’s no longer a tradition if you’re going to break it for three years but in the spirit of blogging, I’m going to restart my yearly post of presenting the top 10 movies of the previous year that I’ve seen, just like what I did for 2006, 2005, and 2004. (Also, it’s Oscar night tonight!) As with those earlier posts, I only considered movies that had their screening in Philippine cinemas in 2010 and which I was able to see that same year. 2010 was a pretty decent movie-going year for me and I was able to watch a respectable total of 45 films.

Here’s the list of my top 10 best movies of 2010 (in order and linked to their Wikipedia articles):

1. Inception

2. The Social Network

3. Buried

4. RPG Metanoia

5. How To Train Your Dragon

6. The Road

7. Megamind

8. The Ghost Writer

9. Kick-Ass

10. The American

I’ve already raved about both Inception and RPG Metanoia, so I’ll just make a quick run-down of the rest of the list. As expected, these are all a matter of taste and you are of course quite free to disagree. I will also link to the Plurks (if any) where I microblogged about the movie.

My sisters found The Social Network quite boring, but being the Internet junkie that I am, I find the early history of Facebook (even if fictionalized) very fascinating. The movie is well-made and Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (2010’s Time Person of the Year) is very compelling. It’s no wonder for me that the movie is an Oscar nominee for both Best Picture and Best Director, and Jesse is a nominee for Best Actor. I’m now waiting for the movie about Google to be made. (Plurk)

Buried has a unique concept. The whole movie showed nothing but actor Ryan Reynolds buried alive in a box for the whole duration of the film. That seems to make for a tedious watch, but believe me that Buried is a really worthy film to see if you want something different. (BTW, the movie’s trailer is a bit misleading.) (Plurk)

Sorry Toy Story fans, but the best foreign animated film for me would be How To Train Your Dragon. I was personally more touched by the relationship between a loser boy and a crippled dragon than I was with Andy and his toys. (Plurk)

The Viggo Mortensen-starring and post-apocalyptic film The Road is a difficult one to watch. But the bleak cinematography and the emotional grip of the plot makes the movie compelling.

Initially, I had a hard time deciding which of the two anti-hero villain animated movies, Despicable Me and Megamind, I liked better. Ultimately, I went for Megamind’s better plot and more redeeming character development over the cuteness of Despicable Me’s Agnes and Minions. (Plurk)

The Ghost Writer is a great political thriller starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan and directed by Roman Polanski, who is wanted in the US for sexual abuse charges. The plot is intriguing, the acting is superb, and the spectacular seaside views of Germany (as a stand-in for New England, since Polanski couldn’t film in the US) are breathtaking.

Kick-Ass kicked ass. ’Nuff said.

Among the ten films, I think the spy thriller The American would be the most boring for other people. The film is full of scenes where no one is talking, but the views of rural Italy, and George Clooney’s very restrained acting, more than make up for the huge lack of movement (though there are a few action scenes here and there). (Plurk)

I blogged in 2008 that if ever I would get a permanent tattoo, I would get something like the one pictured above. This is a stylized Greek letter phi which represents the golden ratio. The golden ratio is my favorite number by far and I just love how it is crops up in so many places and how it provides a nice blend of mathematics and art. I love it so much that I made that logo for my amateur QuickBASIC software “company”.

Late last year, Judd commented on my tattoo blog post wanting to know who did that logo. I told him that I’m the designer and Judd mentioned that somebody actually went and got a tattoo of my phi logo.

I’m quite flattered that someone thinks that my phi logo is good enough to be immortalized as a tattoo design. Do you think that I should charge him royalties?

There are only three general crowdsourced mapping projects active in the Philippines that are worthy of note: OpenStreetMap, Google Map Maker, and RoadGuide.ph. Since I’m heavily involved in the project, I often write about OpenStreetMap. I’ve also written several pieces about Google Map Maker but I have never really written about RoadGuide.ph save for a few sporadic mentions here and there.

Anyway, RoadGuide.ph is a GPS-mapping project with the primary goal of creating the best routable Garmin map of the Philippines. Garmin is a GPS device manufacturer, and is, based on anecdotal evidence, the most popular brand for personal navigation devices (PNDs) here in the country (and I’m guessing that the success of RoadGuide.ph has a hand in that). RoadGuide.ph, or RG for short, formally started at around the same time that OpenStreetMap took off in the Philippines, which is around 2008.

Let me say that I’m an admirer of RG. They know the importance of good data referenced with GPS and as a community, the regulars are a pretty helpful bunch. I actually envy the camaraderie of their group and I hope that the Philippine OpenStreetMap community would have the same level of group dynamics. In addition, if I were to recommend a Philippine Garmin map, I wouldn’t hesitate to point people out to RoadGuide.ph since they do have more routable data than OpenStreetMap (which also has a free Garmin GPS map of the Philippines). While I’m a vocal OSM supporter, I’m also quite practical and so you could do worse than try and get the latest RG Contributors Map.

So if I like RG, why don’t I join that project? Well, I don’t own any Garmin device and I have no immediate need to route all over the country so their map is not that useful for me. I also like how OSM is a more altruistic project in that it freely gives away its data without really asking anything in return unlike RoadGuide.ph that reserves its best map for people who contribute (which, I have to emphasize, is not a bad thing). In addition, with OpenStreetMap data, you can repurpose it to create paper maps, routable maps (and not just for Garmin devices), and web-based maps (something I really like) unlike RG which is only for PNDs.

I also am a bit turned off with the fanboy mentality of some of the long-time RG members. When a person was considering whether this commercial non-Garmin PND with its own Philippine map is any good compared to Garmin+RG, one member remarked without proof, “Believe me you’re wasting your time. It’s not an option especially if you have the Roadguide Contributors Map.” In a different exchange, another member declared that “Our map is the best there is, the best there was, and the best there’s going to be!” It appears that for some of the RG supporters, it’s inconceivable that there would be something better than their Contributors Map.

Well, let me prove that the RoadGuide.ph Contributors Map, while quite extensive and excellent in its coverage, is not the be all and end all of routable maps for the Philippines. Shown below are several map comparisons of selected places as seen in OpenStreetMap and RoadGuide.ph via Garmin MapSource. The RG map is their 1.21 map released last January 20, while the OSM map is as of January 22.

First up is Malapascua Island in Cebu.

As you can see, RoadGuide.ph is quite blank, but the island has a wealth of data in OSM lovingly contributed by Jim, a British expat who enjoys visiting the resort islands of the Philippines.

Some might say that you don’t really need a PND while visiting a tiny island so they’d counter that Malapascua is not a good example. Well then, let’s go elsewhere.

Shown above is Tagbilaran City in Bohol. The data in OSM was donated by Arivac, a consortium who did some research on this island, and further edited by doy_nick. So, would you still use RoadGuide.ph to guide you in Bohol’s capital given that there is better data elsewhere?

How about Taal and Lemery in Batangas, depicted above? If you wanted to visit the miraculous waters of Our Lady of Caysasay, then OpenStreetMap would help you more than RG. The data in OSM is thanks to Basilisk.

We also have San Pablo City, Laguna which has been mapped in detail by resident Ian Lopez, OSM Philippines’ third most prolific mapper.

If you wanted to buy some wood carvings in Paete, which would you prefer to guide you, the data in RG or the OSM map of this town, which was contributed by tutubi, a native of Paete?

How about Tagaytay? While I believe that RG has slightly more points-of-interest (POIs) in this tourist city, OSM actually has better road coverage, even including streets of several residential subdivisions.

Even in Metro Manila, RoadGuide.ph does not have a monopoly on better data. In UP Diliman, RG has wrong and outdated roads in the Science Education Complex.

In the heart of Intramuros, Manila, I was actually shocked to see that POI data is practically lacking in RoadGuide.ph. Compare with OSM.

I can show more places where OpenStreetMap has better data than RoadGuide.ph. Of course, it’s far easier to show the opposite since RoadGuide.ph covers much more of the Philippines than OSM. The point of my comparison is to demonstrate that you should also check out other maps out there instead of relying solely on the RoadGuide.ph Contributors Map. Some Garmin devices let you load two or more maps—use that feature to also load the OSM-PH Garmin Map as a complement to the RoadGuide.ph map. It’s free anyway! And if you’re feeling thankful, then we also won’t mind corrections or contributions coming our way. (You can contribute your data to both RG and OSM; there is no exclusivity in both projects.)

Last January 15 was Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary. It’s a bit hard to believe that it’s been that long. But 10 years, especially on the Internet, is a significant length of time and it’s a testament to the universality of Wikipedia’s vision of sharing knowledge to everyone that this project—which in theory is a disaster, but in practice is a success—has lasted this long and is still thriving, having raised $16 million during the last annual fundraising.

I have been a Wikipedian for a little more than eight of Wikipedia’s 10 years, so I have seen the ups and downs of the project. While I am not as active as I used to be (well, another project inspired by Wikipedia has grabbed my attention), I still see plenty ahead for Wikipedia, especially here in the Philippines, and will continue to support the project in many ways.

To celebrate this historic milestone, there were hundreds of Wikipedia 10 celebrations held throughout the world. Here in Metro Manila, Wikimedia Philippines organized Wikipedia Takes Manila, a photo scavenger hunt competition with the aim of taking pictures of significant landmarks in the City of Manila (and then some). These photos will help towards building the free media commons on the Philippines and will also be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles about Philippine-related topics.

Despite plenty of hiccups and disorganized planning (like maps of Manila that arrived too late and unforeseen Internet bandwidth requirements), I’m glad to say that the event was still successful and the participants went home happy.

Congratulations to the top ten teams (and individual) (listed below)! The score each team got is shown in parentheses.

1. Team RMD (889)

2. Team Waka Waka (793)

3. Flashbang (579)

4. Manila Bloggers Network (491)

5. Darwin Cayetano (482)

6. A-trio (478)

7. RM Photowalkers (451)

8. Newbies (404)

9. Pro-chamb (403)

10. Vega (394)

Given the overwhelming response shown by the participants, I’m quite sure that we will be having more of these kinds of events in the future. And even if you can’t attend one, just remember that you don’t need to write articles to help Wikipedia. Even contributing freely-licensed photos still goes a long way.

Wikipedia Philippines 10 cake photo by Eric Calica (CC-BY-SA 3.0 PH).

Would you believe that the missing Batanes, and the misplaced markers for the Tubbataha Reefs and the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River are not the only problems with the map of the Philippines found on the new peso banknotes?

I have had the chance to see the new 20-peso and the 50-peso bills up close over the past few weeks. Well, I was even more dismayed to see a few more errors and omissions in the depiction of the Philippine map.

Shown above to the left is the Philippine map as it looks like on the reverse side of the 1000-peso bill. To the right is the actual silhouette of the archipelago (minus Batanes for better comparison). The major error that I spotted is the wrong shape of Panay (that triangular island in the middle). Apparently, the BSP did a massive land reclamation project along the western coast of Antique such that the northwestern peninsula of Panay is no longer a peninsula. If you have a new peso bill with you, look at that new coastline closely and you can see an impossibly straight line which made me believe that this was an unintentional error (some tracer must’ve gotten a bit lazy).

In addition, like the missing islands of Batanes, I also find it a bit problematic that there are no lakes depicted on the map. At the scale that the Philippine map was printed, the lakes of Laguna de Bay, Taal Lake, and Lake Lanao should be quite visible. I also think that Lake Mainit in Surigao and Lake Naujan in Mindoro should also be seen. The BSP was able to include lots of tiny islands (many of which are smaller than Laguna de Bay) but no lakes? The BSP is able to include plenty of microprinting but no inland waters?

Responding to earlier criticism, the BSP has said that “for our banknotes we used an artist’s rendition of the Philippine map that by virtue of space and aesthetics does not reflect all of our islands and the precise coordinates of each site” and that “they are abstractions of reality”. Those are flimsy excuses. The problem is that the printed map does actually depict the Philippines quite accurately which only implies that the design team really meant to show a “cartographic” map instead of an “artistic” map. And since the map is cartographic, any error or omission is quite glaring. Thus the slew of criticisms. If the designers showed a simplified and stylized map of the country, I doubt that anybody would seriously find fault with it.

Many people might dismiss those people who point out errors on the maps, the scientific names, and the parrot colors as a bunch of nitpickers. They say that most Filipinos would not notice these mistakes that only experts would spot. They will also say that there are bigger problems that we should tackle. Well, I’ll leave it to you to agree with them or not, but in response to those counter-criticisms, my friend said it best:

Banknotes are the lifeblood of our modern economy. It is the most visible legal transaction every person (in the modern economy) [engages] with on a daily basis. The designs of banknotes are reflections of our culture and heritage as a Nation.

Kung sa design ng pera mali-mali tayo, eh paano pa sa ibang legal transactions?