Key:uuid/Proof of Concept

Proof of Concept

Please note that this is just a proof of what UUIDs could be used for, this example could be used to print out OSM promotional stickers for businesses that want them, these QR Codes could also be printed on business cards or even large billboards, the possibilities are pretty endless.

In any case I decided to test out this concept, by building a small set of scripts that firstly check the OSM change files for new UUIDs and then insert this information into a simple database, I then built another script that can redirect connections using the UUID to the main OSM site browse page for that object.

I already had scripts to generate QR Codes, so I repurposed this to embed the redirection script + the UUID, which if you view the image via a suitable QR Code reader will redirect you to the Object's browse page, this script will take any valid v4 UUID and generate a QR Code for it:

http://4ll.us/?uuid=21d906f1-7a93-49f5-beee-7c126b840a85

The link embeded in the QR Code is http://4ll.us/IdkG8XqTSfW+7nwSa4QKhQ== although an osm.org link would be better, and a shortening URL service link could be printed underneath the QR Code instead of just the OSM URL. The link in the QR Code will redirect you to http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/27940475

Getting a list of current UUIDs

I coded a small custom DB that people can pull a JSON encoded copy from to save needing to parse changesets for. This is the basis for UUID monitoring that I plan to use to track accidental (or malicious) deletions.