I appologize for being such a newbie. Good thing that OSM has such kind users who can quickly drive me away from falling into the dark side of the force!

I will put my virtual legs to rest, then. I didn’t mean to be any sort of black sheep, I just wasn’t aware that the legal boundaries where that rigid.

So thank you for clarifying me on that.

Is it less ‘dubiously legal’ if I take the train, pay 6€ and walk the street myself? I just use to tour around and spatial orientation. Sometimes, making out which building is which is rather difficult using Bing Sat. It becomes fairly easier if I get to see the actual façade of the rooftop I’m looking at. As far as I’m concerned, that doesn’t violate any terms. I’m contributing with local knowledge of the areas, not copycatting Google’s dated maps.

I’m not adding information from Google Maps, I’m just using Google Street Viewer to ‘locate’. Instead of actually walking the streets, I walk them virtually. The editing is done solely based on my local knowledge!

I appreciate really appreciate your suggestions!

I also did quite a bit of research on the StreetPilot® c550 as I really wanted it to do the job, even if it required some sweat and tears to find the solution, but soon realized it wouldn’t work at all. As for Macbook, I trully believed it had some kind of GPS receiver incorporated because of the location services. Turns out it relies on Wi-Fi and SSID. That’s a ‘Doh!’ for me, I guess.

Everyone must think I’m rather silly for insisting on tracking so much, but the truth is my college evaluation depends on my work around here and I’ve been willing to try those features ever since I saw my teacher loading a track and synchronizing some pictures with it! It’s too bad I’m having so many problems getting my hands on the necessary equipment.

A smartphone would indeed be the solution to the tracking problem, but I just can’t afford one right now. And it’s fairly easier to borrow a GPS off of someone than a phone ! I figured I could set up an Android emulator on my Macbook and use a GPS tracking app. but, according to the opinions out there, the performance of such systems is rather poor. At least for now. Anyway, a classmate of mine has one of those hiking devices and I will probably end up borrowing that from her.

Thank you for the insight, though!

I will try them both and write an entry on it soon. It’s really nice to have so much feedback from more experienced users. I do appreciate all your kindness and help!

BCNorwich, I really had no idea such thing existed, but will definitely be using it from now on! Great advice, thank you. :))

Thank you so much for your warm welcome! The reason why I would like to experiment with GPS is due to the goals of the GIS class I am currently undertaking. We are supposed to be as technological as possible! So, I hope I’ll get to toy around with some other features of OSM (using JOSM) in the near future. I appreciate your comradery!