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TomTom Flames OpenStreetMap
An anonymous reader writes "TomTom Navigation has a recently launched article on what they call the 'negative aspects' of open data projects such as OpenStreetMap. As there are no hard facts and details to the studies they refer, the OSM community identified this release as classic 'Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.'"
TomTom is clearly referring to the case where OpenStreetMap caught Google contractors vandalising OSM.
"In some places, like where I live ... However, Bing Maps is the best one of them with most information"
Yeah, we really really really need a new moderator option, -1 marketdrone
I hate to say it but GP is telling the truth in the case of the UK, especially when it comes to walking trails. Look at this bing map view of a nearby valley. It clearly shows footpaths, contours, wooded areas, etc, you can see where to walk and how difficult the terrain will be. On the other hand the google map view of the same area shows the valley as a blank! I certainly find bing much better for hiking route planning, in fact I would go as far as to say its impossible on google.
Essentially OSM works on the principle of "with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". There are cases of vandalism in OSM, but they don't last very long; the community usually picks them up rapidly and reverts them.
We have one advantage over Wikipedia in that it's easier for us to determine what's right. On Wikipedia, if one contributor says "John Doe's contribution to scholarship was important" and another says "no it wasn't", you get an edit war. On OSM, if one mapper says "this road is called Market Street" and another says "this road is called Market Road", we just go and look at the street sign. The rule is "what's on the ground". (The one place where this breaks down is disputed territorial borders, such as Northern Cyprus and Kashmir, but there are procedures in place for that.)
Bing maps nowadays are nothing but a front end for navteq's maps. As a result, they have very detailed maps as navteq is one of the biggest mapping companies around.
Bing maps became navteq maps after the deal with nokia where MS was forced to adopt some nokia tech for a fee to show nokia it was serious about the long term.
Google maps are not really comparable. They're significantly worse because google isn't a mapping company that existed for a long time.
Many years ago a freeway bypass was opened near my home: so to access the freeway I do not need to cross the city center. When I bought a TomTom device in 2010, I noted that the bypass was not yet added , so TomTom always plans a route thru the city center: I added it manually and suggested as a correction - but no official correction was ever issued. Last summer I forked another 70€ to buy a map update, in hope that it would add this correction: but no, I wasted my money. I am deeply disappointed.
In addition to your very good point some of the commercial maps (used to?) deliberately add mistakes to their maps as a test that they can use to see if anyone is copying them.
ye ye - I know [citation needed], don't feel like it
[citation provided] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_streets
When you hear names like "tomtom", "garmin" and so on, these companies do not actually provide maps. They provide UI shells and minor map modifications but licence actual maps either from navteq or tele atlas (two biggest providers of mapping data in the world).
TomTom bought TeleAtlas in 2008...
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
If you are talking about the US, ZIP+4 (what I think you mean by Zip-9) only indentifies a small region (like a block). Otherwise you'd be limited to 10k addresses per ZIP code, and there's certainly plenty of places that would fail.
Tom Tom still thinks the first few hundred kms of the 800+ kms Hume Highway between Melbourne & Sydney is 100 km/h. I am not sure how far it thinks that's the case because I turn off after a mere 250kms. It's been 110 km/h ever since I moved to Oz 12 years ago.
Granted, my example is not quite as old as yours, but probably a more significant example of certain providers actually not giving a crap about updates on the basics, let alone the explosion of new estates and traffic conditions. FFS.
Roads are flagged with hours of operation, seasons, etc. I don't know about Scandinavia but here in New Hampshire, US we have roads that are only open in the summertime because they are not plowed in the winter (and thus closed). This is handled in the database as restrictions.
(Source: former TomTom (Tele Atlas) employee.)
Indeed, in a city a Postcode is usually a street, part of a street, or a single block of flats. Out in the countryside a postcode can cover square miles of farmland.
Google Maps sometimes shows postcode boundaries, here's one in Glasgow that's about 200m across
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=G2+4jq&hl=en&sll=55.86512,-4.267604&sspn=0.002071,0.004506&hnear=G2+4JQ,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=16
Wheras this one near Inverness is about 1km across
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=IV6+7XN&hl=en&ll=57.528981,-4.470577&spn=0.015852,0.036049&sll=57.529572,-4.536686&sspn=0.253622,0.576782&geocode=CZh9Pqs90U35Fd3rbQMdgOy4_ynT6PPhdwCPSDE0q-qJe8xFvw&hnear=Muir+of+Ord+IV6+7XN,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=15
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.