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If you love map editing and collaborating on better map data for the people, http://www.openstreetmap.org/ http://www.openstreetmap.org/ is available for editin
by anc84 11y ago
If you love map editing and collaborating on better map data for the people, http://www.openstreetmap.org/ http://www.openstreetmap.org/ is available for editing. You can choose from a multitude of editors, your edits are live within minutes and everyone can benefit from your contributions. OSM is free and open, you can download it all, you can do whatever you want with it, you are not feeding a corporation that might or might not appreciate your sacrifice.
- MatthewWilkes 11y agoMapMaker was great for selfish reasons, though. My postcode had the wrong bounding box and some new roads were missing from it, MapMaker made it possible for me to get deliveries much more easily.
- Piskvorrr 11y agoFor the very same selfish reasons, I've made some OSM edits. Now I (and incidentally, everyone else) get better geocoding, better (foot+bike+car) routing, and a list of useful POIs :)
- liotier 11y agoAlso, in return for your contributions, all you get from Google is a single map rendering whereas Openstreetmap offers a multitude of them, the possibility of making your own and the whole source data that Google will never let you see but that you need for any sort of analytical processing or joining with other datasets !
- smackfu 11y agoFor me, the big win in updating Google Maps is that it uses the updates when routing directions. So now walking directions use the walking paths in our complex, and our culdesac is properly shown as a one way loop rather than just ending in a point.
- anc84 11y agoSame with OSM based routers, there are several websites and apps available. OSM is fantastic for walking and biking routing.
- Fogest 11y agoYes but none of them have as powerful of a navigation system, nor do they usually account for traffic data which can be incredibly handy when deciding which route to take to head home from work or school during rush hour.
- liotier 11y agoMapquest Open lists "Traffic data © 2014 INRIX, Inc" as one of its data sources: http://info.mapquest.com/attributions/ http://info.mapquest.com/attributions/ - and their maps are from Openstreetmap.
- Fogest 11y agoMapquest I find is not very good though compared to Google Maps. Much harder to find a POI.
- danieldk 11y agoCertainly. But OSM allows you (or anyone else) to use their data, make a startup or non-profit to implement such functionality. Google Maps, in contrast is a data silo. Even if you put data in by contributing it, it's Google's data. The possibilities to implement new ideas on top of it is very limited. As others say, the stuff that people do with OSM is terrific. E.g. you have communities of mountainbikers who enter data about small paths, level of difficulty in the uphill/downhill direction, etc. You can extract a MTB-specific map out of it (which is exactly what openmtbmap does), which renders on your GPS such that all relevant information for mountainbiking is there, routing is adjusted such that you mainly use interesting paths, etc. There are a gazillion other interesting applications that are not possible at all with proprietary maps such as Google maps. Also, these days, the point of interest annotations are better than nearly any other map. Heck, in my area in Germany, even picnic tables, etc. are generally in there.
- Piskvorrr 11y agoGood point - OSM is not just this one map; I've now used it for offline (!) geocoding, online and offline (!) maps (shared tiles, customized tiles, own tiles, vectors), offline POI searches etc. Most of this is not even possible with proprietary maps, let alone allowed (if you have nothing better to do, go take a look at Google Maps T&C, it forbids you many things - need a route on a device which can only display text? Sorry, no can do, either you must show a Google Map, or you can't use Google's routing).
- 83a 11y agohttp://hiking.waymarkedtrails.org/ http://hiking.waymarkedtrails.org/ is a quite impressive example for this. you may choose other layers in the right top!
- outside1234 11y agoIs there a FAQ somewhere on how to get started with the project as an amateur and mostly consumer of the data (but who would be willing to donate hiking, biking, and driving tracks)? I'm assuming there must be an easier way of uploading GPS tracks than manually.
- rmc 11y agoOSM beginners guide: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners%27_guide http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners%27_guide Bing has allowed OSM to trace from their aerial imagery, so you can use that as well as uploading GPX traces.
- weavie 11y agoOut of interest what measures are there in OSM to prevent people 'pranking' the system and entering duff data?
- avar 11y agoThe same as on Wikipedia or any other collaborative "wiki"-like tool. There are active mappers in each area that look at changes that are being done there, we also have access to the complete edit history so we can see what changed when, where and by whom. People do vandalize the data occasionally, or accidentally screw something up. That gets dealt with relatively quickly. Although like Wikipedia the likelyhood of someone spotting bad edits is inversely proportional to how "busy" the area is, if you're going to add a new street to the center of Paris that's likely to be spotted much sooner than adding some fake country rode to the middle of Siberia. Mostly it just works though because good actors outnumber bad actors by many orders of magnitude.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y ago> The same as on Wikipedia or any other collaborative "wiki"-like tool. But that's not unlike what Google has and that did not help :(
- Piskvorrr 11y agoOnly in the sense "all cars have four wheels, so a Indy 500 car is just like a dump truck". Google has "this will go through Our Glorious Administration and we might decide to look at it." In OSM, it is possible (and encouraged) to first contact the original mapper for clarification in good faith - much faster and more efficient.
- rmc 11y agoAn active community of equals and map enthusiasts, who feel like they are participating in and sharing in creating something for everyone.
- 11y ago