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Why the World Needs OpenStreetMap
An anonymous reader writes "Over the past six months, we've all grown a bit more skeptical about who controls our data, and what they do with it. An article at The Guardian says it's time for people to start migrating en masse away from proprietary map providers to OpenStreetMap in order to both protect our collective location data and decide how it is displayed. From the article: 'Who decides what gets displayed on a Google Map? The answer is, of course, that Google does. I heard this concern in a meeting with a local government in 2009: they were concerned about using Google Maps on their website because Google makes choices about which businesses to display. The people in the meeting were right to be concerned about this issue, as a government needs to remain impartial; by outsourcing their maps, they would hand the control over to a third party. ... The second concern is about location. Who defines where a neighborhood is, or whether or not you should go? This issue was brought up by the American Civil Liberties Union when a map provider was providing routing (driving/biking/walking instructions) and used what it determined to be "safe" or "dangerous" neighborhoods as part of its algorithm.'"
Open Street
Can nae be beat
With proper ads
Every so many feet
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The level of detail is just fantastic, and I can carry the entire map on an sd card for offline use, including routing. It's plain awesome.
even the oldie-goldie paper maps were outsourced except for the larger cities (not states or countries).
ACLU can protest, but I'd far rather have a system that gets me around neighborhoods where I get a gun shoved in my face for my ride, then another with the trigger pulled in my face for being the wrong race in the wrong place.
In fact, I wouldn't mind a service that can make and keep current heat maps so I can glance at somewhere like Cleveland or LA and know what routes to take so I don't end up having my vehicle (and my cranium) perforated by .40 ammo so a gangbanger can "blood in" and show it off via a YouTube video.
There was a company that was doing heat maps of crime, but they have not done a single update in two years.
Somehow I envision a Wikipedia of maps, with boundaries and street names changing at random if two groups can't agree.
Sure it may not happen in downtown Topeka, but imagine to geo-edit wars that will happen in the Middle East or other disputed territory.
Three Squirrels
Any move away from a single minded, publicly traded corporation is a good thing. The worst is yet to come.
Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
how to get to Sesame Street?
"Who defines where a neighborhood is, or whether or not you should go? This issue was brought up by the American Civil Liberties Union when a map provider was providing routing (driving/biking/walking instructions) and used what it determined to be "safe" or "dangerous" neighborhoods as part of its algorithm.'"
That doesn't come from the map provider though. That data is from someone else, overlaid on ANY map providers map... using OpenStreetMap changes that not a whit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
using crime stats to overlay and provide safer routing is a great feature. if that happens to show an ethnic neighborhood is like being in a Mad Max movie, so be it. I for one don't feel like I'm contributing to diversity and equal opportunity by letting a minority rob or maim or kill me.
I don't see how an open map solves the problem of the annotated street map that is "politically incorrect" but useful. Bike lanes marked which are dangerously exposed and poorly maintained, especially in winter. Streets and neighborhoods even the prostitutes avoid.
...or assume that white people don't.
I hate to fall back onto freemarkets self regulating in these scenarios, but actually this is exactly what I see happening here and for search in general.
Maps are only as good as their accuracy and their results. Just look at the backlash against Apple maps, and the number of people who installed the Google Maps app when Apple maps went through it's hilariously bad teething phase.
People don't use maps that aren't accurate, so if I can't find something on one map, I go to another, and if I find one map to be more accurate then I stick with that map. Internally politicising results is suicide for a company that produces this kind of service.
If Google isn't careful, they will loose this race. Right now it is a bit of a toss up. It wasn't always so. A few years ago OSM was just toy, and the Android Google Maps app did a reasonable job of offline maps and searching the local area. My how things have changed.
On the one hand Google has been busily removing features from it's Maps app. I think they were trying to make it easier to use. Whether they achieved that is debatable, but what they done is make it less useful. You can't measure distances now, the search for local places of interest is all but useless, there is no way to find out what maps are available for offline use.
OsmAnd+ on the other hand has acquired one big missing feature - directions, navigation and voice. Amazingly its point of interest search works much better than Google, possibly because the locals enter the point of interest data. And it always had a number of features Google Maps doesn't:
Normally I would not bet against Google. But collecting traffic and public transport out of the realms of possibility for Osm. If that happens, I can't think why anybody would choose to use Google Maps over OSM.
Yup, crime statistics are public information.
The next thing you know the ACLU or some Cities will be anonymizing crime statistics to protect feelings.
Responses to 911 calls will be dispatched to random addresses so as not to cast aspersions.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Bugger that, can I pay Google to have more people routed past my billboards?
Let me see if I can put this delicately. If you care about this you're an idiot. (Oh well.).
If you're driving around what you really want is a "heat map" of traffic accidents. If you're walking around what you really want is a "heat map" of pedestrian deaths. And so on...
Stressing out about stray bullets, even in a "bad neighborhood" is only one step up from worrying about lightning strikes.
(Note: I live in West Oakland. Everyone is excited that they're were only 92 homicides in Oakland last year.)
Great. Could we also have maps showing where bankers, investment counselors and other white-collar criminals live? The only difference is when they steal they don't use a gun.
You still don't get it, do you?
When they steal, they don't even commit a crime.
And you better believe they fucking wrote it that way.
note that it actually talks about "Who defines where a neighborhood is", as in neighbourhood borders
Rich
when i was in south africa, i was told that in central johannesburg people sometimes get robbed of their cars. stop at the red light, two cars come. one stops in front of you, one behind you, a couple of guys with guns throw you out of your car. :)
"traffic accidents" would not be enough
Rich
(This is a cycling computer.)
Good: It showed all the street detail, *plus* it showed the offroad trails not shown by the Garmin maps.
Bad: The navigation functionality no longer worked.
I have found that Navteq -> Nokia -> Here have the best maps AND the best Link / Node sources.
Google just plain sucks because you have to feed from their API but they do have damn accurate maps, as to their routing engine well...
OSM is pretty good but the level of cruft is quite high and takes a LOT of work to make it usable so...
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
The ACLU people should just use Garmin. I was driving with my SiL and her family a couple years back because they were unfamiliar with the area and she wanted to follow the Garmin. Its directions were becoming exceedingly sketchy, but whatever, until it wanted her to turn down a dark alley in a seedy part of a city with one of the worst crime rates on the East Coast.
At that point I said, "hell no, go straight, take the first left, a quick right, the next left, and take the entrance ramp to the highway." (I'd been watching the roads the Garmin should have put us on).
So, those concerned about offending somebody can just use Garmin. In the meantime, somebody tell me which map routing algorithms use crime data to adjust their routes so I can give them some money.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I agree, we should use OSM, so we make it bigger and better. But as I have to make a website were there're pinned points in a city map so everyone can see it, OSM is not useful for me. Sadly, it can't replace "Google My Places"..yet
This is currently inavailable: http://open.mapquest.com/
Or may be I'm overlooking, I just need a map where I can mark places and probably attach photos to it (like to show the front of a starbucks store). But in a whole country. As far as I can know, can't do it with OSM, without serious work.
I always found Nokia maps to be better than Google maps on my phone, but I haven't used it since Nokia switch to Microsoft only.
I'm looking forward to trying 'here maps', which is what came out of it in the shake, once it is available for other platforms : http://here.com/
However, I guess it has similar issues to Google in this context.
Max.
Measuring distance in a straight line isn't all that important.
Really? Then why do you see a measurement scale on nearly EVERY printed map.
And that's in a realm where you have to further approximate by holding something against the scale, then against the map...
In a digital map scale is even more vital, because you can zoom in and out and quickly lose track of exactly how far distances are at your current zoom level.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
no turn on red in the USA as an example
Did I miss something? We can turn right on red at almost every intersection.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I have a lot of friends who proudly contribute to google maps. Whenever I try push them towards OSM, the response is. Its not good enough. roads are missing. POIs are less.
Its like a big whoosh.
OSM is user generated. More users will mean better maps. Looks at Europe. We did a trip in norway, and we could navigate perfectly just with OSM. Why? Because of local participation.
Secondly, we have lost a lot of battles. Today facebook decides what content to show. Want your status update to be seen? Well pay money. The corporations have one agenda. Gamify and monetize. We need to get out and reclaim whatever we can.
And OSM is just one of the pieces of the puzzle. If more and more people started contributing, there is no reason for OSM to be inferior. For example, the Indian city of Chennai is as well mapped as google.
More users means more developers come and develop better routing algorithms. Better POI searches. Better map features.
So if you don't like OSM in your area, Fix it. Its not too difficult. To get something, if you expect some corporation to come and do it for you, remember they will do it in a way it benefits them. To get what you want, you have to make an effort.
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Crime maps are available for many cities. Unfortunately, there was a lot of noise made a while back about decreased property values and business losses when crime stats were going to be included in driving directions.
Google Maps and my Garmin can route my around traffic, but they sometimes insist I drive into bad neighborhoods. That's fine in the greater metro area that I live in, since I know how dangerous various areas are. It's not so good when I'm in a strange town.
I was out of town for work, and told the people at the site where the maps had me drive through. They asked how many times I was shot at. Apparently they weren't the safest neighborhoods. Fortunately, the locals, while dangerous, couldn't hit a moving vehicle.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The problem is: you don't want to have to setup and maintain your own map server when the Google alternative is include some JavaScript for free. For all I like OSM I can't see me going to a customer and tell him to spend 1000 per year (possibly more, HW plus labour) on that. Chances are the project goes to somebody else. What OSM needs is somebody providing a high traffic map server for free. What commercial model could use?
Thats the point - you want it highlighted on those junctions where it's not permitted, so you don't get caught by the cop sitting in the gas station on the corner waiting for those that do turn.
When Maps is included in Android, it's hard to compete with it.
Or will government require another "ballot screen" for it?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
So just how "Open" is "OpenStreetMap"?
Can I download the data and set up my own server in case OpenStreetmap closes it's free access?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I work professionally with mapping from several sources. For reference and comparison I check against OSM data as well, and would love to use it regularly, but my experience has been that OSM is not always accurate (that is an understatement to be frank. For example, a city close to the city I live in has a point location roughly 10 miles off from where it actually is in the detailed OSM data. People don't always see that data, only a map result, but that data is essential for routing and path planning). In addition, OSM's geocoding is not very flexible, and, geocoding applications built on top - such as gisgraphy - do not have the same level of address matching AI / fuzzy logic in to determine locations from incomplete or inaccurate addresses. I and other colleagues have written my own fuzzy matching and heuristic address matching that is better than either OSM or gisgraphy - but unfortunately it's for proprietary use so I / we cannot contribute it.
I want OSM to work. It would be nice, but, for the moment it's not quite up to prime time. I see the comments here saying "it's what Google maps should have been" and so on, but, working with and comparing with not only Google but other map providers, I cannot agree - yet...
"Hmm, I could have sworn Clover, VA used to be around here..."
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
The point he was making was that traffic accidents would cover everything that you need to worry about. A rare but well publicized event with some thugs robbing a person in a car just isn't important.
Hey, that's a good idea. I got a speeding ticket in Marion, VA 20 years ago at 3AM, and I'm still pissed about that. Maybe I'll delete that shitty little town from the map!
Carjackings are very common in certain locales. It's not idiotic to worry about such things. Things aren't quite as bad as the 70s and 80s now, but if you're the wrong color, it can be extremely dangerous to drive through certain neighborhoods at certain times.
when i was in south africa, i was told that in central johannesburg people sometimes get robbed of their cars. stop at the red light, two cars come. one stops in front of you, one behind you, a couple of guys with guns throw you out of your car. :)
"traffic accidents" would not be enough
If you're lucky. A guy in our building in Joburg was carjacked at the lights, but the guy fired the pistol having failed to remove the keys.
Fortunatly it jammed, and the would-be jacker took his time clearing the gun why the chap escaped. When Group 4 arrived 10 minutes later they found both the misfired bullet with a dent in the back, a few spent casings, and a bullet hole in the back of the car.
Lucky escape, I'd rather drive in gaza than joburg.
Citation needed. The ACLU is a civil liberties supporter, and providing an informational service alleging that some neighborhoods are dangerous is clearly an exercise of freedom of speech, which falls squarely under the 1st Amendment, and should be something anyone who cares about civil liberties would back, even if they don't personally like the content of the message.
You may not think of yourself as being sheltered, but if you live someplace where random violence is not a serious concern, then, compared to many of us, you are. Drive-bys, jackings, and other attacks against drivers are so common in Cleveland and even some of the inner suburbs as to be un-noteworthy unless someone dies, and rarely reported to police. (Sometimes they are commited BY police.) No one walks if they can help it, and while a lot of people do take buses if they have to, this is what befell a young man just a few days ago, across the street from my old grade school and one block away from Lake Erie, for the "crime" of trying to take a bus to his job at the Cleveland Clinic at 5am.
Nonaggression works!
Exactly, so running or driving through their neighborhoods won't result in you getting a gun shoved in your face.
See http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/
Better. Alter the map so it's the only route, and give them a four-hour traffic jam.
Hey, if it's good enough for the governor, it's good enough for you.
John
Not in New Jersey you can't. Technically, you can turn right on red at any intersection that doesn't have a "No turn on red" sign posted; however, in reality, a majority of intersections here have those signs posted because the roads were designed by forest animals (literally).
Also, there's some states where you turning right on red is not legal (I think Delaware might be one, if not the only one).
But as the other responder said, the important thing is that it's allowed at some (most in most places) intersections, but not all, so that needs to be known by a navigation application so it can remind you.
Google isn't free and does cost high bandwidth users. I think that is where the $10k annual fee mentioned in the GP comes from (for that specific application). Google slows down the serving of images coming from the same website and does other games if you aren't paying for it. Some customers are cheap and expect freebies all of the time, but you should tell prospective customers that there is no free lunch. Serving images costs at least bandwidth even if the images themselves are free. Comparing what it costs a serious data user to some hobby website is not even a valid comparison as Google does serve up images for free to low bandwidth usages, but beware that your website may get cut off if you have a slashdot effect or something similar.
Admittedly the issue is what commercial model can you use in order to freely serve up to date map images for OSM? What you need to sell a customer in this case is a custom rendering solution to the open map data in a way that you currently can't get from Google. There is additional data already above and beyond anything found on Google Maps, and you need to emphasize that anything added to the database won't be captured and resold shutting the customer out either (such as what happened to Grace Note with CDDB that went commercial and "stole" thousands of volunteer hours in a commercial endeavor). This is a hard sell though because Google Maps does have a bunch of nice add on features too.
Well, a purely data crime map can be used to determine dangerous areas. That's more useful than someone just drawing a circle saying "bad 'hood".
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The people I am talking about are not Americans.. they are Indians :)
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Unlike Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap doesn't allow anonymous edits. So vandalism is rare.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
Really? OpenStreetMap can have speed limits and turn restrictions, and also where restrictions are enforced. I'm wondering how you concluded that "obsolete by design" and "lack of planning" applied to OpenStreetMap.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
Many online maps are low contrast so that overlays (e.g. tracks in different colors, polygonal areas, markers) will stand out. With the OpenStreetMap data, one can set up their own rendering styles; here are some examples.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
All 50 states and DC have been the same for over thirty years: right turn on red unless marked.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Nope. Go re-read your own link. New York City doesn't allow right turns on red, unless a sign specifically permits it. What you're referring to is state law; some municipalities override that.
You said some states do not allow right turn on red:
Also, there's some states where you turning right on red is not legal (I think Delaware might be one, if not the only one).
That is incorrect. All states, DC, Guam, PR allow right turn on red. Some cities do not.
A caption in the linked wikipedia article also states:
In the United States outside New York City, right turns are permitted on red (except for school buses and trucks carrying hazardous materials) unless there is a "No Turn on Red" or a "Right Turn Signal" light indicating the same and controlling the right turn.
Yes, NYC is a special snowflake. There may be others, but it is incredibly rare.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon