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> Widespread adoption has other benefits. Mapbox doesn't need to send out pricey cars or satellites in space to map the world. "Map data is not like food, air,

> Widespread adoption has other benefits. Mapbox doesn't need to send out pricey cars or satellites in space to map the world. "Map data is not like food, air, water that's just around. It takes active work to make it," says Young Hahn, Mapbox's CTO. Whenever someone opens a Mapbox map, that person's phone or computer sends three pieces of anonymous data back to the company: longitude, latitude and a time stamp. These billions of data points constantly improve Mapbox's real-time plug-and-play map of the world. "Every time you touch the map, the map is learning," Gundersen says. "It's that flywheel." What do they mean by that?

schoen 8y ago
It's strange to say that food is "just around" in urbanized industrial society. Maybe for hunter-gatherers...
mtmail 8y ago
The Mapbox map is tracking its users. Based on that location data they can derive unmapped roads, turning restrictions, traffic jams (and time-of-day congestion), construction. And feeding other machine learning system to improve the data set. In a recent press release they talk about deployed sensors, no longer users. Google Maps knows when rush hour at your local gym is, Mapbox wants the same. It's a big selling point to their investors because staff editing/fixing the map doesn't scale well.
- jstandard 8y ago
  Any ideas about how they're solving the need to constantly update meta data like speed limits or POI names? This is the part of the OSM data set I found particularly weak when comparing vs. Google Maps.
  - mtmail 8y ago
    For those I assume licensing data from commercial providers. For Germany geocoding for example Mapbox uses government data, not OpenStreetMap (found out reading a github issue when another user asked why an OSM change wasn't reflected). https://www.mapillary.com/imagery https://www.mapillary.com/imagery is using image recognition for traffic signs and lists Mapbox as a user.

schoen 8y ago

It's strange to say that food is "just around" in urbanized industrial society. Maybe for hunter-gatherers...

mtmail 8y ago

The Mapbox map is tracking its users. Based on that location data they can derive unmapped roads, turning restrictions, traffic jams (and time-of-day congestion), construction. And feeding other machine learning system to improve the data set. In a recent press release they talk about deployed sensors, no longer users. Google Maps knows when rush hour at your local gym is, Mapbox wants the same. It's a big selling point to their investors because staff editing/fixing the map doesn't scale well.

jstandard 8y ago
Any ideas about how they're solving the need to constantly update meta data like speed limits or POI names? This is the part of the OSM data set I found particularly weak when comparing vs. Google Maps.
- mtmail 8y ago
  For those I assume licensing data from commercial providers. For Germany geocoding for example Mapbox uses government data, not OpenStreetMap (found out reading a github issue when another user asked why an OSM change wasn't reflected). https://www.mapillary.com/imagery https://www.mapillary.com/imagery is using image recognition for traffic signs and lists Mapbox as a user.