4 ms·

Typical use case for me: hitting on Google Maps to find addresses via venue names; 99% of the time. I.e. I enter the name of the restaurant etc + some fuzzy dat

Typical use case for me: hitting on Google Maps to find addresses via venue names; 99% of the time. I.e. I enter the name of the restaurant etc + some fuzzy data, like part of town or name of the city. This just works. Last time I checked (just now), this still didn't get me any useful results from OSM for the European capitals I frequent (Rome, Paris, Berlin). I guess it is even worse for smaller cities. Yes, there is some venue/business data. But it is too sparse, at least for most of Europe, for OSM to be a useful replacement for Google Maps -- even in the medium term. The question would be: how could this be rapidly improved? For example, I entered probably two dozen places that were missing on Google Maps, in the past. While this data is now Google's, I entered it, originally. What's more, if I would be adding it again, to OSM, I'd certainly enter the same data. I wonder what the legal perspective would be if everyone crawled "their" data (i.e. the data they personally entered) from Google maps and forwarded it to OSM.

untog 13y ago
What you're talking about is geocoding, not mapping. OSM doesn't even have its own geocoder, and I'm yet to find one that gets anywhere near to Google's results. Sadly.
- virtualritz 13y ago
  Not sure I get what you mean. The 'Edit' function on openstreetmap.org lest me add exactly this kind of information. So they do provide it, or not?
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    Sort of. The search box on the OSM.org site is more a data inspector than it is a search nearby box. So going to a place and searching for 'fastfood' returns objects from around the world based on the name matching 'fastfood'. A more structured input, like 'fast food, detroit, mi' returns something more sensible (but it is still searching the city limits of Detroit, not the metro area). So the machinery there provides information, but it is not set up for end user situations.
    - rmc 13y ago
      (but it is still searching the city limits of Detroit, not the metro area). Not necessarily. It depends on what the geocoding software does. It might use rigid "city" borders, or might not. In Europe, we don't have these rigid "city borders", so lots of software has to cope with that.
  - aw3c2 13y ago
    The data easily provides the possibility. The .org website however might be lacking your specific wishes.
- mtmail 13y ago
  It does, it's called Nominatim (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim)
Dosenpfand 13y ago
Try http://open.mapquest.com/ http://open.mapquest.com/ It's using OSM data and I'm using the search function the way you describe it.
- virtualritz 13y ago
  Kind of. It seems to have more data, but not nearly as much as Google. Of ten places I searched for, it knew two. Also the search function is stupid. Say, I am zoomed into a city and enter a term. Instead of searching the city I am looking at, it searches the whole world. Or lets say I searched for a restaurant. When I am zoomed into the max, Google Maps will show me all restaurants around the area (that makes sense, doesn't it)? That's just basic UX stuff which, until fixed, will prevent people from using this over Google maps. Or rather: if will prevent people like me, to advertise it to their non-hacker friends, as I know, stuff like this will make them have a hard time and later tell me "it didn't work for me" I guess what I'm trying to say is: OSM needs to be as useable as GM, before people will switch in masses.
Doctor_Fegg 13y ago
Legal perspective: GMaps' ToS forbid you from doing any form of crawling in order to get bulk geodata. Even stuff you've entered yourself.
rmc 13y ago
how could this be rapidly improved? Add more data to OSM! Placenames, neighboud names, road names, add pubs, restaurants, venues, with their names and addresses! I wonder what the legal perspective would be if everyone crawled "their" data (i.e. the data they personally entered) from Google maps and forwarded it to OSM. That would probably be against Google's ToS. However if the knowledge is still in your head, then you can just manually enter it into OSM. The 'search' box on the front page uses Nominatim[1], a programme for turning lat/longs into addresses (and vice versa). If there's a bug or the output doesn't look right, feel free to submit an issue. [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim
stephen_g 13y ago
I use a GPS app on my iPhone called NavFree - it actually lets you use Google search for geocoding, and then OpenStreetMap data (stored offline, which is awesome) for the navigation. It works really well. Sadly they haven't updated the data on the Australian version in six months though.

untog 13y ago

What you're talking about is geocoding, not mapping. OSM doesn't even have its own geocoder, and I'm yet to find one that gets anywhere near to Google's results. Sadly.

virtualritz 13y ago
Not sure I get what you mean. The 'Edit' function on openstreetmap.org lest me add exactly this kind of information. So they do provide it, or not?
- maxerickson 13y ago
  Sort of. The search box on the OSM.org site is more a data inspector than it is a search nearby box. So going to a place and searching for 'fastfood' returns objects from around the world based on the name matching 'fastfood'. A more structured input, like 'fast food, detroit, mi' returns something more sensible (but it is still searching the city limits of Detroit, not the metro area). So the machinery there provides information, but it is not set up for end user situations.
  - rmc 13y ago
    (but it is still searching the city limits of Detroit, not the metro area). Not necessarily. It depends on what the geocoding software does. It might use rigid "city" borders, or might not. In Europe, we don't have these rigid "city borders", so lots of software has to cope with that.
- aw3c2 13y ago
  The data easily provides the possibility. The .org website however might be lacking your specific wishes.
mtmail 13y ago
It does, it's called Nominatim (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim)

Dosenpfand 13y ago

Try http://open.mapquest.com/ http://open.mapquest.com/ It's using OSM data and I'm using the search function the way you describe it.

virtualritz 13y ago
Kind of. It seems to have more data, but not nearly as much as Google. Of ten places I searched for, it knew two. Also the search function is stupid. Say, I am zoomed into a city and enter a term. Instead of searching the city I am looking at, it searches the whole world. Or lets say I searched for a restaurant. When I am zoomed into the max, Google Maps will show me all restaurants around the area (that makes sense, doesn't it)? That's just basic UX stuff which, until fixed, will prevent people from using this over Google maps. Or rather: if will prevent people like me, to advertise it to their non-hacker friends, as I know, stuff like this will make them have a hard time and later tell me "it didn't work for me" I guess what I'm trying to say is: OSM needs to be as useable as GM, before people will switch in masses.

Doctor_Fegg 13y ago

Legal perspective: GMaps' ToS forbid you from doing any form of crawling in order to get bulk geodata. Even stuff you've entered yourself.

rmc 13y ago

how could this be rapidly improved? Add more data to OSM! Placenames, neighboud names, road names, add pubs, restaurants, venues, with their names and addresses! I wonder what the legal perspective would be if everyone crawled "their" data (i.e. the data they personally entered) from Google maps and forwarded it to OSM. That would probably be against Google's ToS. However if the knowledge is still in your head, then you can just manually enter it into OSM. The 'search' box on the front page uses Nominatim[1], a programme for turning lat/longs into addresses (and vice versa). If there's a bug or the output doesn't look right, feel free to submit an issue. [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim

stephen_g 13y ago

I use a GPS app on my iPhone called NavFree - it actually lets you use Google search for geocoding, and then OpenStreetMap data (stored offline, which is awesome) for the navigation. It works really well. Sadly they haven't updated the data on the Australian version in six months though.