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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.'"
FTFA: "We harness the local knowledge of our 60 million satnav customers, who can make corrections through TomTom Map Share." So... open mapping projects are worse than their closed mapping product because their closed mapping product is collaboratively edited by the users... Nice argument.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
I would hope a self-driving cars use data from it's immediate surroundings to make decisions and just use a GPS as a navigational device that can be overridden by irl factors on the ground. It wouldn't even have to be sabotage that overrides a gps, just your avg Cop/Fireman blocking off a street temporarily.
IMO, people are bigger dangers. Especially in a situation like where faulty data will lead a GPS will tell them to turn the wrong way on a one way street and they don't really check. I have a friend that obeys the things blindly. I know the GPS is screwing up and using a route that may look good on paper but is utterly long irl compared to some shortcuts the locals know. But no, she never listens. The GPS says so and it must be followed. She's the type to veer into oncoming traffic on a one way street if, fate forbid, her GPS screw up majorly one day.
They may be "built using unreliable hardware and software", but expensive commercial maps are apparently often pretty badly wrong - including "dangerous" things like mislabelled one-way streets, roads that head into lakes, and other errors that could cause serious accidents, many of them unfixed for years!
The motives are obvious, the critique is not very specific, everyone who is using OSM does realize their limitations, and anyone who is using mapping software and gets in trouble because they prioritize the mapping data over what they can see with their own eyes should not be on the road anyway.
Too bad for Tomtom, but they stopped to be relevant quite a few years ago.
"In some places, like where I live ... However, Bing Maps is the best one of them with most information"
And where is that place where you live? Sorry, I get suspicious if a newish user account promotes Bing like that.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
The oddest part, to me, is that they kind of admit to the same issues in TFA:
Our map-makers are real experts, many having over 20 years' experience in the field. And we harness the local knowledge of our 60 million satnav customers, who can make corrections through TomTom Map Share.
Surely a disgruntled employee can be do a better job at keeping disgruntled users in check, than a community of volunteers...
TomTom is clearly referring to the case where OpenStreetMap caught Google contractors vandalising OSM.
Greetings and Salutations;
Well, I have been editing and contributing to OpenStreetMap for several years now, and, I have to say that while there is a point to the criticism, in general, I would disagree with their analysis. It is a bit too self-serving for my taste. I do not own a TomTom, but, have had a couple of Garmins, and, have used a TomTom unit before. The commercial maps have been no better than the Open Source maps, and in several cases have been far less accurate. There are a number of places here in East Tennessee where the commercial maps have the GPS insisting that I am driving through the fields on the side of the road.
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.
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
"Many drivers rely heavily on satellite navigation for precise directions, and mapping errors can be extremely dangerous, particularly in the case of one-way streets."
I see people using these commercial quality navigation units every day and still they take stupid actions like driving into a oneway street and making last second turns (right... left, NO RIGHT swerving all over the road) while spending more time looking at their statnav than on the road. Turn by turn navigation is dangerous by itself when used blindly no matter what maps are being used, they induce a near total lack of anticipation of traffic.
Basically they say that they provide more "quality control" than OSM, and that people should check their electronic map, this is not false...
The arguments are very similar to the ones the various encyclopedias offered (and still offer if they haven't disapeared yet) against wikipedia.
But they do recognize value in OSM, so I guess they are more into thinking how in the future leverage OSM, after all the real competition to tomtom is not OSM but google map or bing map on the mobile phones....
They should focus on lowering the price of their hardware, who will pay at least 150€ for a satnav, when they can have something similar for 19€ on an android phone.
(since they need the phone subscription anyway, and yes the tomtom is probably "better", but 130€ buys quite a lot of gasoline, even at current prices).
Maybe they'll bring out a 50€ android + osm based navigator, and offer some fun "add ons"
I wonder how they handle winter roads, like one can find in the northern part of Scandinavia.
This are routes that are open only in winter when the lakes are frozen, and provide very convenient routes and shortcuts. In summer however they are closed for obvious reasons.
Yeah, we really really really need a new moderator option, -1 marketdrone
They should worry more about Google maps/navigation. You get a smartphone with that on it, and suddenly a Tomtom doesn't seem like a good buy anymore. My mom has a Tomtom because she could practically get lost driving on a straight road, and it has worked well. However it has nothing on my smartphone with Google on it. Reason is that the smartphone can (and does) fetch map data in realtime. I don't have to remember to load maps for where I'm going and they'll be as up to date as Google has at the moment.
In terms of other features like plotting a route talking you through things and so on they both work fine.
That's their real threat. Anyone who has a newish Android smartphone already has this, and I have to presume it is available on all other platforms. It's free and it works well. You don't have to remember to bring anything with you, other than your phone which you probably already have. Heck even if you don't have the app you can download it in the field.
Between that and cars with built in nav systems, I can't see them having a market for much longer. Stand alone GPS units are going to be the kind of things that hikers use, if you are on a roadway your car, phone, or both will already have you covered.
I am ashamed of our marketing department
TomTom itself will direct you to a point about half a mile away from my house (in the middle of a large town) if you put my postcode into some of its GPS devices.
That's caused problems both for friends and takeaway delivery drivers :(
The problem with open maps is that too many can edit them.
The problem with closed maps is that too few can edit them.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Reason is that the smartphone can (and does) fetch map data in realtime.
Yes it does, which is great right up until you are in an area with really poor data.
On any smartphone I will always have at least one offline mapping app, so that I can find things around me (or how to get out) even if data connections fail.
You can alleviate that to some degree with caching (which Google Maps does) but it still doesn't help if you want to search for something new or run into an area the caching did not anticipate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I bought a WinCE PDA with TomTom back when they first appeared.
I later got a new version of the TT software for the same PDA.
Later I bought a TomTom device (still a WinCE PDA, but only running TT).
Then I bought an Android phone and... TT didn't have an app, so I got a different brand.
TT's enemy isn't some open mapping service, it's their own failure to adapt to the changing world around them.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
"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.
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
The fact that Tomtom feels the need to bring up OSM says to me that OSM is now a credible competitive threat to them. The business model of selling maps for use on gps units is rapidly becoming obsolete, they can either try to fight it and become increasingly irrelevant, or adapt...
Incidentally, what i dislike about tomtom is that having bought the device, i needed a code to register my map, and this code was on a tiny sticker attached to the sleeve of a cd that came in the box... When my sdcard died, i replaced it, reloaded the software and map, only for it to refuse to work unless i entered the code. I still have the physical device, but have no idea where the code is (most likely lost) so am left with a relatively expensive device that i now cannot use via official channels.
Ofcourse, i simply found a crack online which allowed me to use the device i paid for without the tiny strip of paper containing an arbitrary code.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I have a TomTom and a month ago visited Cyprus. I did not find map for Cyprus. The only thing I have found in TomTom forum was a discussion if Cyprus is in Europe. O.T. It did not make to slashdot, but TomTom's had a nasty GPS bug after last DST switch. To get a GPS lock you had to cold start it.
The one thing that sticks in my mind about Tomtom: when they got sued by Microsoft, the open source community rallied round. But did they ever bother making the minimal effort to distribute a Linux client, perhaps to show appreciation if nothing else? Appreciation not just for the support they got against Microsoft but for giving them a free platform to build their business on? No. Too much to ask, apparently. As far as I am concerned, Tomtom can fuck themselves.
Oh, and when I lost my Tomtom I did not replace it, I bought a Garmin.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I have been working with digital map data for on advanced driver assistance applications for a few years, and my experience is the following:
Some applications want lots of data. They don’t care if it is perfect or not, such as whether there is a zebra crossing, a traffic light, a stair, a path for mountain bike but not for road bike, etc. One example of this is navigation: it doesn’t matter if the turn has an error of 10 meter, if it is 10 or 25 degrees to the right, etc.
Other applications they are fine with less data, but this must be absolutely accurate to within a meter. Examples of this are active-safety applications, such as map-based adaptive front lighting, curve warning, etc.
Some other applications are in the middle. They are not very sensitive, but annoying if incorrect: example of this is speed limit warning.
The biggest map vendors collect hundreds of attributes at very high quality. This is true particularly for low-number functional classes (highways and motorways). They often meet the 5-m absolute and 1-m relative accuracy for geometry.
It is very difficult for OSM to meet this high quality, specially because you need a differential GPS (DGPS) to collect these. That said, map vendors invest most of their effort on large important roads, while rural or off-roads have from low to very poor quality.
Moreover, one thing is the quality at which data is collected, and another one is the map quality. Vendors tend to decimate (strip-out) geometry points on non important roads in order to reduce the size of the map.
So to sum up: if you are on a motorway or highway, OSM probably won’t match the quality of Navteq, Teleatlas or Google. If you are on a rural area, off-road, bike trail, etc., OSM will probably kick everyone’s butt. Plus it is usually more up-to-date.
TomTom tries to close this gap with their community content, which I find very dishonest from them. They save millions by using people’s data, but they don’t pass these savings back to the consumer.
I've made the mistake of buying U.S. maps from TomTom twice. Fooled me twice, so shame on me.
In both cases, I needed TomTom to get me to hotels in the south east, where the hotels are located on roads that were created about 3-4 years ago. Google Maps had the roads, but even the most recent update of TomTom did not.
So I emailed TomTom and I was like, hey, your maps are really stale regarding this address. Their response? "Here's how you can correct our maps."
Excuse me, but I'm not paying ~ $50 for the privilege of correcting your maps. If I take the time to show you where your maps are wrong, and I can point your customer support people to the correct data on Google Maps, you do the damn work of updating your fscking maps.
I've found TomTom quite useful over the past few years, but I really can't see continuing my business relationship with them.
TomTom itself will direct you to a point about half a mile away from my house (in the middle of a large town) if you put my postcode into some of its GPS devices.
That's caused problems both for friends and takeaway delivery drivers :(
Isn't that what a post code is, though? They are only useful for narrowing a search down to a certain area, that's why addresses also include road names and numbers.
Just out of interest, are the fjords and other bodies of water littered with the sunken remains of vehicles driven by those who forgot to switch their GPS to summer mode?
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.
That's simply because they've specifically chosen to make available data from the Ordnance Survey. You can get the same maps on your own non-commercial website free if you want them (http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/web-services/os-openspace/api/index.html) or also see them on the OS website (http://www.getamap.ordnancesurveyleisure.co.uk/).
Ironically, the "getamap" website requires Microsoft Silverlight, whereas Bing doesn't.
The reality is that the problem has never been with Ordnance Survey, but with the terms and conditions of Google Maps. It has absolutely nothing to do with derived data or our licensing terms but everything to do with Google claiming the right to use any data you display in Google Maps in any way it sees fit, even if it doesn’t belong to them.
Frustratingly, this is only a problem that exists with Google Maps. No such clause appears in the terms of any other mapping API, including Bing Maps and our own OS OpenSpace.
The problem with open maps is that too many can edit them.
The problem with closed maps is that too few can edit them.
TomToms problem with open maps is that they can't charge for them, and they compete with their product. This is just marketing BS AKA lies.
I'm not trying to say that smartphone navigation will take over the world. I knew a bunch of people would respond ascribing me that position right after I posted but oh well. I'm saying that it will take over Tomtom's market.
The Tomtom isn't a device that hikers, surveyors, etc buy. It something you buy to get GPS in your car. It is designed around the idea of car sat nav. Well guess what? When you are sticking to city streets, cell coverage is usually pretty good. Even if it drops for a second, it'll pick back up fast enough. No problems there.
In terms of foreign travel, again not the market for a Tomtom. People don't tend to pack these things along to then put in their rental car (presuming they even elect to get a rental car) because you can get one with the car, that has all the maps (Tomtom charges for maps).
Like I said: Their market is car sat nav. They aren't like Garmin who are targeting people who go off the beaten path (literally). The market they are in is the market where Google Nav works great.
OSM seems way less of a threat to them than that. As a simple anecdote: I was considering getting a car GPS. I don't drive a whole lot, I bike to work and can walk to most stores. So often when I am driving, it is to some place I've never been that isn't near where I live. Car GPS would be nice. I'd put it off since they were kind of pricey and I could solve the problem with a pen, paper, and online directions before leaving. However as the price dropped I thought maybe it would be something to have for convenience.
Then, I got my smartphone. I now have zero desire to own one. It takes care of everything perfectly. I have no reason to spend the money on a separate nav system and in fact a good reason not to in that I never forget my phone. It completely eliminated my interest in a sat nav.
You are right, that when I go visit my parents in Canada I can't use it, unless I want to pay roaming charges... However I wouldn't use it anyhow. I don't plan the driving around, it is their turf, they take me around. If I was going to do any substantial amount of driving I'd rent a car, not use their car, and in that rental I'd get a sat nav.
Navteq uses...
Navteq is the company that provides maps and mapping services. 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). Navteq and tele atlas in turn get their maps from their cartographers, one of whom you just mentioned.
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.
The title should be: TomTom fears OpenStreetMaps
And by FUDing on them TomTom just really said that OpenStreetMaps are serious competitor and TomTom can soon be out of the business.
Except that you haven't compared that output to the actual terrain. Someone tried to foist Bing maps off on someone I know. The guy is mister diplomacy, never a direct bad word about something ,except for the Bing maps. Both the image quality and the accuracy were shit. Had he been shown a random area he was not familiar with, the scam might have worked but in his case it only showed off how buggy and inaccurate the maps were. Needless to say things were better on Google maps and he tried to enlighed the foister. However, Bing was probably chosen on ideology so I'm not sure his admonitions had any effect.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Of course, now I have RTFA I know there ARE applications out there that can give me some serious benefits for travelling .. so I am now downloading Waze to my Android phone .. oh my.
I have to actually LOOK at the road I'm driving on? I can't simply go down the flooded road 'cause my navi says it's all right?
What's next? First they want me to pay attention to the traffic, now this! Driving sure gets more complicated every day.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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
UK postcodes are just a grid 1km I think, I am on the wrong computer to check. You can always import that leaked Postcode db into a mapping software to see what I mean. This normally translates in to a part of a street.
Not a grid, and their size does vary, but they are generally only a few hundred yards across; Google Maps will do an outline of the approximate area that a postcode covers, but as a rule of thumb a postcode covers an average of 15 properties.
Oh, and forget using any 'leaked postcode db'. The Ordnance Survey made available a CSV file that maps postcodes to coordinates as part of their OpenData project a few years ago; usage only requires attribution, not payment.
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
Of course, I'm sure that TomTom licensed it properly, rather than just swiping some 'freely' available data for their own commercial use.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
UK postcodes generally identify a particular street, or even a particular section of a street if it's particularly long or has a large number of houses.
UK postcodes are just a grid 1km I think, I am on the wrong computer to check. You can always import that leaked Postcode db into a mapping software to see what I mean. This normally translates in to a part of a street.
Wrong. My postcode covers about twelve square kilometers; down in the village they have three within a hundred metres. It's based on a (rough) number of delivery addresses.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
My wife used to work for a well known map company. She was told that it was common practice to deliberately insert errors so the company could tell if its maps were being copied (I guess they could easily release the lawyers that way).
I wonder how many errors there are in the maps used by GPS. Maybe since it is more controlled, there are less errors ... maybe.
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.
On the way to my former residence, all the mapping services I have ever use direct me to a bit of a shortcut, taking a small bridge over a local river instead of the bridge associated with the state highway.
Said bridge has been closed (condemed) since 1967.
I have attempted to bring this to the attention of multiple major map direction sites and gps companies, but despite 'accepting' my correction, the latest Tom-Tom unit (just for example) still gives the route over the closed bridge
Do you have an example such road –such roads should be tagged access=private on OpenStreetMap, and would be rendered with alphaed red splodges over the top indicating it as private.
Another tremendous Open Street Map feature is that we get the data. When I need a map specific to my needs (treasure hunt for the kids, map for a flyer, etc.), I go to open street map, download the map as an SVG, open it in Inkscape, add/remove features, crop, edit to taste, save as PDF, mail and/or print.
Thank you, Open Street Map!
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.
Where I live, virtually nothing is completely mapped by OSM. Some stuff (that seems to have been imported from an ancient database) is completely wrong. Knowing that, it's still useful. Basically, the stuff that is mapped are the roads and trails that are in common use by the 4 or 5 people using OSM in the area. Even with poor coverage, you end up being able to get to all the major areas. If it isn't mapped, it's a good indication that there isn't much to see there.
I actually started with OSM because none of the bike trails in my area were mapped by anything else. I wanted a map, so I had to draw it myself. It's been fun. I used to use Google maps all the time, but I've now switched completely to OSM with no complaints. I don't really do that much, but whenever I get time, I wander off on my bike and GPS to someplace that hasn't been mapped and go exploring.
In Canada and Alaska ice roads are very real in the winter. I have learned quite a lot about them from the History Channel's Ice Road Truckers over the past several seasons. It's amazing to me that in some places the ice can hold over 2 tons.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Google wants to be able to edit the map, as they expose a Map Editor for users. If they can't claim ownership, then they will not able to have their users make changes, either directly (using Google Map Editor) or indirectly (collecting GPS tracks and elevation data to supplement roads and terrain)
I use Waze for most of my navigation now, which also uses an open mapping back-end that's user editable. Winter roads are one of the features I've requested that it doesn't understand yet -- telling me to take a shortcut through a back road that's not open in January for example. Of course, as soon as I avoid it, it re-routes me properly.
One of the things I love about Waze is that it tracks your actual routes you take, and saves them on the routing server to help it make better decisions in the future.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
TomTom flames open street maps? Shocking! In other news, Microsoft flames Linux, and RIAA labels flame indies. Does this actually surprise anyone? Are there really that many people who would lend any credence to a commercial company bashing its competitors?
Free Martian Whores!
To fully understand zip codes in the US the full 9 digit zip code is the 5 digit post office number and the 4 digit route number.
Time to offend someone
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The funny thing is, Google tried to sabotage Open Street maps (like the article notes):
TomTom is clearly referring to the case where OpenStreetMap caught Google contractors vandalising OSM.
What was offtopic about that? Looks like a Googler drove by with mod points. Remember Googlers: don't be evil. Your trust based business model depends on it. And know that some of you are indeed evil:
Two OpenStreetMap accounts have been vandalizing OSM in London, New York and elsewhere from Google’s IP address, the same address in India reported by Mocality. The most obvious vandalism started around last Thursday last week from these particular users however it may take us some time to do a full analysis. In fact over the last year we have had over 102 thousand hits on OSM using at least 17 accounts from this Google IP.
The report seems credible. If you want to kill your business model, just keep doing that. And to put the icing on the cake, just keep astromodding Slashdot.
Oh wait, it couldn't possibly be Googlers doing it, Googlers possess a moral spine as everybody knows. So it must be Microsoft just trying to discredit Google. Oh wait. It must be Apple. Never mind, you're all made of the same moral stuff it would seem.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
known as copyright easter eggs (in osm community, at least) - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Copyright_Easter_Eggs
Rich