22.06.2013 | Frederik Ramm
We’ve overhauled the download server (download.geofabrik.de) a couple months ago but never really wrote anything on our blog so, let me quickly mention that for a few months now we do not only have a nicer user interface with overview maps and MD5 sums, but we also have selected older versions (usually, data from the past couple of days plus the 1st of each month for the current year) for every extract, as well as incremental updates (diff files). These updates allow you, for example, keep a country extract current by downloading only a fraction of the full file every day, or update an osm2pgsql database that you run with Europe only.
Last weekend we added free daily shape files for Canada’s provinces/territories, and from today we’ll also be serving free daily shape files for all US states. (Larger shape files, e.g. for all of Canada, all of the US, other continents, or the whole world, as well as shape files with more detail or tailored to a specific use case, are made to order for a fee – see http://www.geofabrik.de/data/shapefiles.html).
Would you like to see me explaining the download server (and the technology behind it) in a 20 minute video? Then watch my talk from the SOTM-US conference on Vimeo! The slides are available as well.
