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Thank you for reminding us about TEPCO as well as posting that specific link.

After Fukushima, the Japanese government lied about the radiation until a hacker space started building GPS radiation sensor devices. They gave an excellent talk from 29c3 :
Safecast: DIY and citizen-sensing of radiation [29c3]

Did I mention they used Open Street Map? Open Street Map rocks! It's basically the wikipedia of maps, blows away google maps.

this event was about mismanaging a facility (most likely), so there is a technical angle.
also, openstreetmap volunteers are mapping that region already - give a hand :)
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=31.80806&lon=-97.09316&zoom=16&layers=M

Position of the phone on the planet is defined by 2 numbers. Here is, for example, Boston:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=42.360506&lon=-71.058878&zoom=18&layers=M

These are 42.36050 and -71.058878. So, somehow my smartphone has to know the last known position of a phone, where I want to send a text message. In order to select the shortest route.

Jeez, Schmidt is really one to talk about private organizations spying. It's almost as if he wants a wall of regulation that prevents others from fully exploiting computerized cameras.

You know, OpenStreetMaps already creams Google Maps' data. Just like wikipedia creams Quara, etc. I'm serious, if I pull up any random locate street, I'll find much better information on OpenStreetMaps. Can anyone say Open Street View?

PS: The only feature that would be useful to me in a smartphone would be able to use google maps on the street, but the cost / benefit ratio is too bad on my country (mobile internet - 3G/4G/EDGE/LTE/etc - is a luxury item here).

There are some offline mapping applications for Android, just download the maps on WiFi and use the phone with Data turned off: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android
There are also apps out there to help enforce a data-off policy on your phone, to prevent expensive accidental downloads. Basically, you use your Smartphone like a tablet with Wi-Fi (with the side benefit of having voice calls over cellular).

XML is a bloated data structure used to store data in "human readable" format. Whether a human can understand what it means is beside the point. A much better format for data is to use protocol buffers. That brought the size of OpenStreetMap down to 19GB from what would have been a 370GB XML file.

Following power lines on Google Maps? OpenStreetMap, my friend. Some people have already gone to ridiculous levels of detail in mapping things that formerly would have gotten you a quick visit from your friendly domestic intelligence service. With many countries opening up their data this is only going to get worse, or better, depending on your point of view. And it is all - how fitting for the topic discussed in TFA - readily available on the Internet.

In the middle of nowhere there are no towers anyway, they are not profitable to construct there. Still the messages will not be lost in the internet of wireless devices. As almost everywhere one meets people.

The protocol should use the last know geo-location of a wireless device and route a message to it to the nearest wireless devices in the area (in the encrypted format certainly).

There are only 3 numbers for the last know location: latitude, longitude and time. The protocol can use the excellent free map: www.osm.org

For example, if I am hiking here http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=42.157&mlon=-75.256&zoom=9&layers=M then my location on the planet is defined just by 2 numbers: 42.157 and -75.256 . And I cannot be on another planet.

Speaking is another story, but messaging is most important. Who speaks from the blue now? People first exchange messages and arrange a talk. So one can move closer to a WiFi spot to talk then. But robust messaging is quite doable in the internet of wireless devices. We have a lot of memory in our devices. I have 32 GB from which I use 1%.

All is need is the protocol and we will get the free mobile communication for the whole planet, just like we've got Wikipedia or OSM.

But purely from an organizational perspective, Google Maps is much better.

A serious question here - in what sense is it "much better"?

OpenStreetMap is just a big pile of data that anyone can use. If you're an American and prefer the road colours that you're more familiar with, you might prefer this rendering of the data instead:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=39.0175&lon=125.7623&zoom=14&layers=Q

And of course you've got the ability (if not necessarily the inclination) to create a map of North Korea showing whatever data you want in whatever colour you want.

And this is where integration with existing projects should come first, lest we end up reinventing the wheel. http://www.fixmystreet.com/ http://www.opentraintimes.com/ http://www.openstreetmap.org/ http://www.flightradar24.com/ the 45MB/min MIDAS Gold DATEX traffic information service from http://www.tih.org.uk/ - and many more. And by far not just travel related either, but lets not allow Glasgow to 'create' new apps and datasources that just replicate ideas and services that are already out there.

I hope the administrators of this fund have a good long hard look through http://data.gov.uk/ for inspiration and partners to work with, and that we as users and techs can help push them to make the right choices.

I've already emailed a few relevant parties. Have you?

I'd ask that question here:

https://help.openstreetmap.org/

(and yes, the OSM wiki has been described as worse than inscrutable by insiders too - but I wouldn't include that bit in the help question!)

Maybe some sort of wheelmap-like solution would work?

http://blog.wheelmap.org/en/

Err what? For road name you click on the existing street in the editor and change the "name" field. Hit the "Save" button, wait 2 minutes and refresh the map. You are correct that dentist/doctor isn't in the presets (although veterinarian is...) but that doesn't mean you can't map it. See the OSM wiki for more "tags" that you can use to label things.

How do you know when something gets reverted ? Do you get an email or do you have to go back and check ?

Some new very nifty code is being worked on right now to improve the "history" page. Right now it is kind of noisy with global changesets. You can see the beta here: http://owl.apis.dev.openstreetmap.org/. Somewhere there is also an option to subscribe to an RSS link from that service for a given bounding box. I imagine that will become more prominent once this gets into production.

This seems like a non-story. Open Street Map correctly locates Mildura. When you do a search for Mildura on it, though, GeoNames offers three potential locations: Mildura, Mildura Airport, and Mildura Shire, which OSM locates where iOS6 reportedly locates Mildura:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=-34.1770076751709&mlon=142.1488380432129&zoom=11

Put another way, it's as if mindless users followed Google Map directions to Arizona, instead of Arizona City, and ended up in the middle of Tonto National Forest, and issued a warning that Google Maps are inaccurate. Well, duh, how about suggesting to zoom in instead, so as to make sure you're not heading in the middle of nowhere?

OpenStreetMap

Sorry, this probably isn't what you want to hear, but it sounds like you're wasting your time. Your desire to protect the data simply doesn't make any sense; the best way to protect data is to make it more open. Why are you trying to place restrictions on it? I would forget the project entirely and add maxspeed data to OpenStreetMap. The project is much larger than yours, and has much more impressive maxspeed results.

You can use Nokia maps on your device, or on an iOS device for that matter: http://m.maps.nokia.com/ Besides there's the http://www.openstreetmap.org/ project and it's many (also offline) navigation applications.

If you have a hate on for Google, try one of these. Plenty do offline maps as well.

They could have purchased TomTom, for example and had everything up and running immediately.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. From Apple's mapping attribution page:

© 2006-2012 TomTom
Business listings data © Acxiom, 2012.
Map data © AND.
Property parcel data for USA. © CoreLogic Inc., 2012.
Satellite imagery data © DigitalGlobe, 2012.
Map and postal data © DMTI, 2012. This software contains Postal Code OM Data copied by Apple under a sub-license from DMTI Spatial Inc., a party directly licensed by Canada Post Corporation. The Canada Post Corporation file from which this data was copied is dated 2012.
Business listings data © Factual 2012.
Map data © Getchee, 2012.
© INCREMENT P CORP., 2012, http://www.incrementp.co.jp/gc01info/e/legal01.html.
Map data © Intermap, 2012.
Map data © LeadDog, 2012.
Business listings data © Localeze, 2012.
Mapping data for Australia and New Zealand. © MapData Services Pty Ltd., 2012, PSMA http://www.nowwhere.com.au/lic/NowWhereLic.htm.
Map data © MDA Information Systems, Inc., 2012.
Neighborhood data © Urban Mapping, 2012.
Map data © 2012 Waze.
âoeReviews from Yelpâ Yelp, 2012.
(CanVec)
© Department of Natural Resources Canada. All rights reserved.
http://www.geogratis.gc.ca/geogratis/en/index.html
(CGIAR-CSI SRTM)
CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information, http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/
Flickr Shapefiles Public Dataset, Version 1.0, http://www.flickr.com/
(GeoNames)
GeoNames and contributors, http://www.geonames.org.
(GlobCover)
© ESA 2010 and UCLouvain, http://www.esa.int/esaEO/index.html

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, http://www.nasa.gov

Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2012. Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2012. http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/

(OSDM)
© Commonwealth of Australia, 2012. This data has been used with the permission of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth has not evaluated the data as altered and incorporated within this software, and therefore gives no warranty regarding its accuracy, completeness, currency or suitability for any particular purpose. http://spatial.gov.au

(OSM)
OpenStreetMap contributors, http://www.openstreetmap.org/
(StatCan)
Statistics Canada, http://www.statcan.gc.ca
(TIGER/Line® fi

Your conspiracy theory wouldn't be convincing even if your facts were correct, but few of them are.

both Apple decision to source OSM and the license change happened in 2010

I've been an OpenStreetMap contributor since 2008, and the license change discussions had already been started back then. You can find evidence of the process throughout the project's documentation and mailing lists, but for an obvious example look at the revision history of the OpenStreetMap wiki page for "Open Database License" (OSM's new license) and notice that the first version is from February 2008 and already describes the characteristics that define this license today.

loosing roughly 30% of map data in the process

This is a massive exaggeration of the effects of the license change, as the actual numbers for data loss are in the low one-digit figures.

Details depend on how you count, and unfortunately some areas - particularly Australia and Poland - were hit disproportionately hard. But even though this is indeed a setback for those regions, thanks to the continuing growth the current version of the database already contains more content than we had before the deletions (go to OSMstats and switch to the yearly graph; the dent in summer 2012 is from the license change). Even though this does not mean that all the damage has already been repaired, it makes me confident that the OSM community is up to the task.

took an Open Source map (OSM) and gave gave it to himself, without an obligation to share back the updates.

This misrepresents the purpose of the Open Database License. The ODbL has an exception for produced works such as image tiles or prints, but is otherwise a share alike license. So under the ODbL Apple would indeed be able to use OSM and keep the artistic components of their products, i.e. their pretty map designs, to themselves, but updates to the underlying factual data (and derivative databases such as routing graphs) would have to be open sourced.

But the most important fact that you are missing: Apple is not actually using much, if any OpenStreetMap data under the new license! The situation is somewhat confusing, though:

• Apple have been using OSM as their primary data source for iPhoto background maps since March. This was widely published and also acknowledged by the OpenStreetMap Foundation. To everyone's astonishment, though, they decided to use a two year old dump of the OpenStreetMap database for that application ... which also means this data is not affected by the license change at all.
• Apple list OSM as one of many sources for their recently released iOS maps here. They fail to mention the license (which incidentally is an, albeit minor, violation of the requirements of both the old and new license). As a result, it is hard to tell whether they have used post-license change data this time.
• Even though some traces of OSM data in iOS maps have been spotted, this is only the case in a few remote areas (Islamabad is one of the more convincing examples). Early assumptions that OSM data might be responsible for some prominent errors e.g. in Japan have turned out to be incorrect. In fact, many of those errors would have been avoided had Apple actually used OSM data there.

So if Apple indeed set up an elaborate conspiracy to have OSM release their data under ODbL, why aren't they using it?

TL;DR: There is neither a plausible connection between Apple and the OpenStreetMap license change, nor has the event damaged OpenStreetMap even remotely to the extent suggested by the parent's factually incorrect description.

I still don't see any map libraries for non-web applications. A few months ago I developed a mobile in QT, and haven't found any library to easily show a map in on screen.

I haven't found one for QT for desktop either, or any of the other common widget libraries.

Have you checked KDE Marble? They advertise the possibility to use their widget for displaying maps in other applications, see the developer section on the Marble website.

There are also various libraries for use with OpenStreetMap in particular listed in the OpenStreetMap wiki's "Frameworks" page, though I cannot tell for sure which of these smaller projects are good or even still alive.

A lot of utility information is now in OpenStreetMap. Are they going to classify that, too?

It precisely is building a schematic map of power grids...

I have added some POIs myself but I found it a bit limited. I found no way to add a phone number to a POI or a website which seems a bit silly.

Actually, adding phone numbers and website links is relatively straightforward. A search in the OpenStreetMap documentation wiki gives you:

• Key:phone
• Key:website

If you are using Potlatch, the Flash editor embedded directly on the OpenStreetMap website, adding arbitrary attributes such as these is supported by the "advanced" view. Other available editors make this even more obvious.

I assume that you were thrown off the track by the "simple" view of the Flash editor, which only lists a selection of frequently-used attributes and for some reason does not include pre-defined fields for phone and website data.

I have added some POIs myself but I found it a bit limited. I found no way to add a phone number to a POI or a website which seems a bit silly.

Actually, adding phone numbers and website links is relatively straightforward. A search in the OpenStreetMap documentation wiki gives you:

• Key:phone
• Key:website

If you are using Potlatch, the Flash editor embedded directly on the OpenStreetMap website, adding arbitrary attributes such as these is supported by the "advanced" view. Other available editors make this even more obvious.

I assume that you were thrown off the track by the "simple" view of the Flash editor, which only lists a selection of frequently-used attributes and for some reason does not include pre-defined fields for phone and website data.

known as copyright easter eggs (in osm community, at least) - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Copyright_Easter_Eggs

They still do. Or at least some...others claim to have stopped the practice.

One point where Open Street Map shines is that it has actual roads and trails in such places as National Parks and forests...where the commercial maps have nothing but blank green areas.

Yep. For example, here is a place in the Alps in openstreetmap, and here is the same place in google maps, and here is the same thing in routes.tomtom.com. Only openstreetmap shows the hiking trail (as well as peaks with their elevations, and mountain huts). This is a really good thing for hikers, runners and mountain bikers.

You can also get topo maps based on OSM data from toposm.com, although this still seems pretty primitive and they only cover the US. Google's maps with contour shading are OK, but they don't let you print them through their web interface (although you can always print a screenshot), and they don't show contour lines.

What isn't so great about OSM is that driving directions from yournavigation.org are not usable at all. Also, the search functionality is (not surprisingly) inferior to the one in google maps -- if you don't put in exactly the right form of the name, it doesn't work.

The same area on openStreetMap shows an odd hodgepodge of detail with some trails showing in disconnected parts.

it would be better if they were to collaborate with projects such as Open Street Map and really share data.

... like Microsoft have been, for example. Open Street Map contributors have been given permission to trace features from Bing's areal photographs since 2010. No such goodwill from Google.

That's great that they are accepting images from "civilians", but it would be better if they were to collaborate with projects such as Open Street Map and really share data.

If you want detail beyond just the road network, then give Bing Maps a try, although if you are on Windows you may want to use IE as it occassionally has issues with other browsers. It varies from country to country, but for the UK they use the full Ordnance Survey maps which are so much better than Google's it's not funny, so YMMV depending on what area of the world you are interested in maps for. Open Street Map is also heavy on the street detail in areas where Google Maps might only show a single road, and no, that doesn't necessarily mean in the middle of nowhere, for instance here's Sarajevo at a similar level of zoom in Google Maps and Open Street Map.

What app do you use and what is your work flow? It's been about a year since I've looked into it but it just wasn't a simple. "Do This This and This". I'm going to be traveling to Germany in a few weeks and although my droid will be a useless phone (CDMA) I'd love to take it as a GPS/portable computing device.

Thanks.

You can use rmaps with map files made using Trekbuddy Atlas Creator. There are lots of tutorials online such as this youtube one. It can also read OSM.

I used it two summers ago while travelling through China and Japan, which was very convenient. I had a global (google) map with not much detail, then in the places I knew I would be I included tile zoom down to level 16-18 depending on the detail available. This allowed me to save a lot of space while still have the detail where I needed it. At the time OSM wasn't very good in rural China for understandable reasons.

Just for completeness' sake – here's a local boating/fishing loch near me... http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=57.57835&lon=-3.63681&zoom=17&layers=M and on google maps http://maps.google.com/?ll=57.578162,-3.633428&spn=0.006512,0.015407&hnear=63+Calcots+Crescent,+Elgin+IV30+6GL,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=16.

Notice that google doesn't mark the cabin, or the path leading to it. Similarly, it marks a path on the east side of the loch as a road... Which I'm sure will be useful when your sat nav directs you down a 2 foot wide path. It also manages to mark a peninsula as an island.

Sure, there are areas where OSM has less detail. But then, there are areas where google has no detail, or worse, incorrect detail. Finally, if you do find an area where OSM has less detail, it's pretty easy to fix that – use any one of the easily available data sources to add detail, or better yet, survey it yourself with your GPS, and add the data.

I think this is more of an ideological move. Google Maps is not free content like Wikipedia itself.

You are probably right about this. Unlike the previous examples of major Google Maps users switching to OpenStreetMap that were triggered by Google's pricing changes, this particular case is primarily based on the compatible ideals of OSM and Wikipedia. On the Wikipedia blog post announcing OSM support for the app, they even explicitly state: "This closely aligns with our goal of making knowledge available in a free and open manner to everyone. This also means we no longer have to use proprietary Google APIs in our code, which helps it run on the millions of cheap Android handsets that are purely open source and do not have the proprietary Google applications."

It's not just a recent development either. Wikipedia has been using OpenStreetMap on some of its websites for years - the German and French editions as well as several smaller languages have built-in OSM maps in each article with a coordinate (e.g. see the documentation for the feature in the German Wikipedia here). There are also several projects for linking and collaboration between the two projects.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_usage_policy

(if you make an app you should mirror the stuff to your own servers.. there's couple of links to services providing tiles based on osm data there)

Inserting data into OSM which came from a copyrighted source is definitely a no-no (unless that source explicitly gave permission, which has happened in several cases).

If you find some data in OSM which you think looks suspicious, there's a procedure to report it.

Quite often it's down to ignorance, rather than malicious intent, where a new mapper doesn't realise that the map they're copying from is either copyrighted or under a licence which prohibits derivative works.

You misunderstood his comment. From his perspective as a German, the attention to detail in OSM is lacking. I mean, in that example, there is no mention of where the nearest trash can is or where the stop signs are located.

I'd like to point out that the Berlin map beelsebob picked as an example does include locations of trash cans. It's just that the default map style on openstreetmap.org omits trash cans to avoid cluttering the map. They are, however, available in the database for anyone who needs them.

There are also several groups of recycling containers such as this one nearby, which indeed appear in the default map style.

So even as a German, I don't see a reason to complain about the level of attention to detail displayed by Berlin's mappers. ;)

You misunderstood his comment. From his perspective as a German, the attention to detail in OSM is lacking. I mean, in that example, there is no mention of where the nearest trash can is or where the stop signs are located.

I'd like to point out that the Berlin map beelsebob picked as an example does include locations of trash cans. It's just that the default map style on openstreetmap.org omits trash cans to avoid cluttering the map. They are, however, available in the database for anyone who needs them.

There are also several groups of recycling containers such as this one nearby, which indeed appear in the default map style.

So even as a German, I don't see a reason to complain about the level of attention to detail displayed by Berlin's mappers. ;)

Go get yourself a rendering tool and customize how OpenStreetMap renders for you to your heart's content.

Oddly enough, there's schema for trash cans and stop signs.

Oddly enough, there's schema for trash cans and stop signs.

The same is true of google maps though. Compare Vladivostok on Google Maps to on OpenStreetMap for example.

You think that's bad, check out North Korea: Google Maps vs. OSM.

Though I'm not sure how well to trust North Korean OSM. I can just picture some guy in a cubicle in NK building phantom roads and towns all over the place just because.

The same is true of google maps though. Compare Vladivostok on Google Maps to on OpenStreetMap for example.

You think that's bad, check out North Korea: Google Maps vs. OSM.

Though I'm not sure how well to trust North Korean OSM. I can just picture some guy in a cubicle in NK building phantom roads and towns all over the place just because.

It's not very difficult if you compare interesting (and not fully done paths) in parks. For example here: http://ivan.sanchezortega.es/leaflet-apple.php?lat=51.53912864704142&lon=-0.20796775817871094&z=14 Check the paths in Paddington Cemetary. They are not completely in OSM; and Apple's tiles have the exact same data. Another point there, is the road classification of the road between Harvist Road and Kilburn Lane. OSM had it (wrongly) like the way Apple had only between Mar 22 and Apr 12, 2010: http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/52186831/history . So with that info, we can even pinpoint the age of their data.

The same is true of google maps though. Compare Vladivostok on Google Maps to on OpenStreetMap for example.

Wait really? Germany? Poor maps on OSM? The german mappers go into insane level of detail –take a look at Berlin for example.

Ah. Was looking at http://planet.openstreetmap.org/ which seems to lack mention of that. Danke.

Whilst OSM is very good for free data, there are still pockets of areas where the coverage is very poor indeed. I had to map out half of my uncle's town as it just wasn't there on OSM (about 9 months ago). At every stage, it's getting better, but the more 'big players' that start to switch to it, the more momentum it will get and the better the coverage will be as more contributors flow in.

This is especially the case as parts of the OSM dataset are about to be wiped out due to the forthcoming remapping.

Whatever the merit of this "reward", I just learned about the existence of http://openstreetmap.org/#, "free geographic data", nice project!

You just heard about openstreetmap? Boy, are you in for a treat! There are many similar great projects out there.

If you like openstreetmap, you're gonna love this. There is a completely free encyclopaedia out there, with free information on just about anything: http://wikipedia.org/