4 ms·

I'm the author of both "Why the World Needs OpenStreetMap" and "Why OpenStreetMap is in serious trouble". I think the issue of a mobile application is an inter

I'm the author of both "Why the World Needs OpenStreetMap" and "Why OpenStreetMap is in serious trouble". I think the issue of a mobile application is an interesting one, and on its own is not an issue, but combined with other issues, it is. My favorite OSM based map app was Mapzen Mobile. The reason I think Mapzen Mobile worked better than other apps was that it generally understood the ways in which users use OSM data, which largely ties into the critiques I and others have around OSM's geolocation services. They're very Euro-centric- even in comparison to how a North American uses the same services. But as long as map apps aren't good, then users will be forced to use proprietary maps, which feeds back into itself. We have some amazing opportunities- more now than ever, but the OSMF needs to put conscious effort into direction, making (ie funding and overseeing development) over mechanisms to allow for regular people to have OSM as easily and as well as Google Maps. This is no small feat, but I think that such a design could be designed- especially if it combined not only the existing mapping technologies for data (ie vector maps across the wire) but also localization of geolocation in a manner that mimiced the way geolocation data itself is crowdsourced- making it easy to build more relevant results from search and display the information people want quickly and easily. But like the author, I am disheartened and have my doubts that the OSMF would take on such an ambitious task. I wish very much that they would!

subins2000 6y ago
I use OsmAnd and there are a lot of features. What troubles with Google Maps in India is that every road is considered basically the same and the routes it calculate often tends to be on very bad roads whereas OsmAnd tries to pick the road based on quality/main-roads first then side roads. This is very useful in India where many roads have potholes. Major roads (national, state, district highways) are better maintained than the rest. This distinction between roads are clearly mapped in OSM, at least in Kerala. GMaps also tries to calculate the very shortest path possible, but this often is a bad idea in India cause the roads won't be that great to go through. Some of the things I like about OsmAnd: navigation-with-voice, speedbump warnings, sightseeing notifications, trip recording+stats, parking area finder, different profiles (walking, driving, browsing etc.) :- all this available offline :)
- tt433 6y ago
  Any domestic competition?
  - subins2000 6y ago
    The Kerala state government is doing an initiative to map Kerala in OSM, school-college students volunteer to map many places. It's been almost running for an year now : https://mapathonkeralam.in/ https://mapathonkeralam.in/ Many people doesn't know about OsmAnd yet, I've been using it full time now. For some places, OSM is more informative than gmaps and vice-versa. The data is increasing day by day, so it's a win-win for every OSM based app here. [OSM was used extensively during Kerala floods 2018 : https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2018_Kerala_Floods,_India https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2018_Kerala_Floods,_Indi... which prompted the government to take initiative such as Mapathon Keralam.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  This is surprising to me, because AFAIK GMaps tends to calculate the fastest route, rather than the shortest one. But perhaps it just didn't have enough movement data where you tried it ?
  - subins2000 6y ago
    > It just didn't have enough movement data where you tried it That maybe the reason, main roads have it, side-roads not so much. GMaps now have offline destination finder, I guess it doesn't even consider the movement data. The dependence on internet service for better route calculation is a bummer for travelling here.
    - BlueTemplar 6y ago
      That's a shame, there's nothing that prevents (the long-term, average) traffic data to be downloaded, just like map data is.
necovek 6y ago
It's actually quite an interesting dynamic: USA OSM data was largely bootstrapped from public domain government data. European data was, in many instances, created from scratch. Serbian OSM is generally more up to date and more correct than Google Maps. I believe that one of the approaches has led to people who are more invested in the result and you can guess which one is that. But to be honest, I find OsmNav better than Google Maps for in car navigation, though they both suck. Perhaps Google Maps is not bad when you can voice control it, but you can't in Serbian.
twic 6y ago
> The reason I think Mapzen Mobile worked better than other apps was that it generally understood the ways in which users use OSM data, which largely ties into the critiques I and others have around OSM's geolocation services. They're very Euro-centric- even in comparison to how a North American uses the same services. Could you expand on this? When you say "ways in which users use OSM data", do you mean "ways in which American users use OSM data"? What is wrong with OSM's geolocation services? What even are OSM's geolocation services - i thought OSM was just a map! What doesn it mean for them to be Euro-centric?
- emacsen 6y ago
  > What is wrong with OSM's geolocation services? They come up with irrelevant results or no results at all. I talked about this in more detail in "Why OSM is in serious trouble". > What even are OSM's geolocation services - i thought OSM was just a map! OSM isn't a map, it's a geographic database. By OSM's geolocation services, I mean Nominatim. Pelias gave me better results but it's gone AFAIK. > What doesn it mean for them to be Euro-centric? People search for things differently in Europe than they do in the US. As a small example, I will regularly search for intersections, but I've been told Europeans don't often do that.
  - juliansimioni 6y ago
    Hi! Pelias core maintainer and former Mapen employee here. It is not gone :) After Mapzen shut down a co-worker and I founded Geocode Earth(https://geocode.earth/ https://geocode.earth/) to continue working on the Pelias project, funded by consulting and, primarily, a SaaS much like Mapzen Search. Over the past 3 years the project has improved quite a bit, and Geocode Earth has had solid growth (50% SaaS revenue in 2020). We've been fully bootstrapped this whole time and plan on continuing this well...indefinitely! In fact, intersection support is already present in Pelias and will be rolling out to Geocode Earth soon :)
    - stewartmcgown 6y ago
      I'd be 100% down to use Pelias at our company if they had correct geocoding for UK street numbers. currenttly, including your house number before your street name causes Pelias not to return any results at all, when the street name alone returns at least the street name.
juliansimioni 6y ago
(Former Mapzen employee here). I _think_ you're talking about Eraser Map(https://github.com/mapzen/eraser-map https://github.com/mapzen/eraser-map) right? It was awesome! It's the closest I know of to "Google Maps, but open source and based on open data". It was an app built for _end users_, not OSM editors. And it worked pretty darn well. When it didn't, any problems could (at least theoretically) be addressed with improvements to OSM data or the Mapzen open-source projects. There was a team of at least two people working on it full time, plus lots of work on the design, product, and integration with geocoding, routing, transit etc. The multi-modal (switching from walking to transit to car, etc) transit directions were particularly awesome. I used it as my daily driver for much of my navigation around NYC, and as time went on only had to fall back to Google Maps maybe 25% of the time, usually for missing POI data. Unfortunately I think it's one of the few Mapzen projects that hasn't seen new life after the company shut down, and like you said it would take quite a bit of work (read: money) to keep it going. It might be possible with some work to find grant money through a couple organizations. The OSMF has done some awesome work lately with the micro-grants, but this would definitely be a level we haven't seen (yet).
- emacsen 6y ago
  To be honest, I don't remember the name of the app. I think I actually got it as an APK from Randy directly...

subins2000 6y ago

I use OsmAnd and there are a lot of features. What troubles with Google Maps in India is that every road is considered basically the same and the routes it calculate often tends to be on very bad roads whereas OsmAnd tries to pick the road based on quality/main-roads first then side roads. This is very useful in India where many roads have potholes. Major roads (national, state, district highways) are better maintained than the rest. This distinction between roads are clearly mapped in OSM, at least in Kerala. GMaps also tries to calculate the very shortest path possible, but this often is a bad idea in India cause the roads won't be that great to go through. Some of the things I like about OsmAnd: navigation-with-voice, speedbump warnings, sightseeing notifications, trip recording+stats, parking area finder, different profiles (walking, driving, browsing etc.) :- all this available offline :)

tt433 6y ago
Any domestic competition?
- subins2000 6y ago
  The Kerala state government is doing an initiative to map Kerala in OSM, school-college students volunteer to map many places. It's been almost running for an year now : https://mapathonkeralam.in/ https://mapathonkeralam.in/ Many people doesn't know about OsmAnd yet, I've been using it full time now. For some places, OSM is more informative than gmaps and vice-versa. The data is increasing day by day, so it's a win-win for every OSM based app here. [OSM was used extensively during Kerala floods 2018 : https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2018_Kerala_Floods,_India https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2018_Kerala_Floods,_Indi... which prompted the government to take initiative such as Mapathon Keralam.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
This is surprising to me, because AFAIK GMaps tends to calculate the fastest route, rather than the shortest one. But perhaps it just didn't have enough movement data where you tried it ?
- subins2000 6y ago
  > It just didn't have enough movement data where you tried it That maybe the reason, main roads have it, side-roads not so much. GMaps now have offline destination finder, I guess it doesn't even consider the movement data. The dependence on internet service for better route calculation is a bummer for travelling here.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    That's a shame, there's nothing that prevents (the long-term, average) traffic data to be downloaded, just like map data is.

necovek 6y ago

It's actually quite an interesting dynamic: USA OSM data was largely bootstrapped from public domain government data. European data was, in many instances, created from scratch. Serbian OSM is generally more up to date and more correct than Google Maps. I believe that one of the approaches has led to people who are more invested in the result and you can guess which one is that. But to be honest, I find OsmNav better than Google Maps for in car navigation, though they both suck. Perhaps Google Maps is not bad when you can voice control it, but you can't in Serbian.

twic 6y ago

> The reason I think Mapzen Mobile worked better than other apps was that it generally understood the ways in which users use OSM data, which largely ties into the critiques I and others have around OSM's geolocation services. They're very Euro-centric- even in comparison to how a North American uses the same services. Could you expand on this? When you say "ways in which users use OSM data", do you mean "ways in which American users use OSM data"? What is wrong with OSM's geolocation services? What even are OSM's geolocation services - i thought OSM was just a map! What doesn it mean for them to be Euro-centric?

emacsen 6y ago
> What is wrong with OSM's geolocation services? They come up with irrelevant results or no results at all. I talked about this in more detail in "Why OSM is in serious trouble". > What even are OSM's geolocation services - i thought OSM was just a map! OSM isn't a map, it's a geographic database. By OSM's geolocation services, I mean Nominatim. Pelias gave me better results but it's gone AFAIK. > What doesn it mean for them to be Euro-centric? People search for things differently in Europe than they do in the US. As a small example, I will regularly search for intersections, but I've been told Europeans don't often do that.
- juliansimioni 6y ago
  Hi! Pelias core maintainer and former Mapen employee here. It is not gone :) After Mapzen shut down a co-worker and I founded Geocode Earth(https://geocode.earth/ https://geocode.earth/) to continue working on the Pelias project, funded by consulting and, primarily, a SaaS much like Mapzen Search. Over the past 3 years the project has improved quite a bit, and Geocode Earth has had solid growth (50% SaaS revenue in 2020). We've been fully bootstrapped this whole time and plan on continuing this well...indefinitely! In fact, intersection support is already present in Pelias and will be rolling out to Geocode Earth soon :)
  - stewartmcgown 6y ago
    I'd be 100% down to use Pelias at our company if they had correct geocoding for UK street numbers. currenttly, including your house number before your street name causes Pelias not to return any results at all, when the street name alone returns at least the street name.

juliansimioni 6y ago

(Former Mapzen employee here). I _think_ you're talking about Eraser Map(https://github.com/mapzen/eraser-map https://github.com/mapzen/eraser-map) right? It was awesome! It's the closest I know of to "Google Maps, but open source and based on open data". It was an app built for _end users_, not OSM editors. And it worked pretty darn well. When it didn't, any problems could (at least theoretically) be addressed with improvements to OSM data or the Mapzen open-source projects. There was a team of at least two people working on it full time, plus lots of work on the design, product, and integration with geocoding, routing, transit etc. The multi-modal (switching from walking to transit to car, etc) transit directions were particularly awesome. I used it as my daily driver for much of my navigation around NYC, and as time went on only had to fall back to Google Maps maybe 25% of the time, usually for missing POI data. Unfortunately I think it's one of the few Mapzen projects that hasn't seen new life after the company shut down, and like you said it would take quite a bit of work (read: money) to keep it going. It might be possible with some work to find grant money through a couple organizations. The OSMF has done some awesome work lately with the micro-grants, but this would definitely be a level we haven't seen (yet).

emacsen 6y ago
To be honest, I don't remember the name of the app. I think I actually got it as an APK from Randy directly...