I just checked my home address on OSM. My whole subdivision and the major 4 lane road that goes past it was all build 6+ years ago. None of it exists in OSM. This is a well populated suburb of Atlanta.
Yep, 80% of my town is unmapped. The same goes for some other towns in neighboring areas that I've checked. Compared to Google maps it's just no good. I have no idea how or on what basis the blog author concluded that OSM is just as good or better then Google maps. Also, I didn't see the option for satellite view.
Well, and my town is mapped perfectly. The difference is that with openstreetmaps, you can simply go and improve what could be better. Of course it doesn't change anything about the quality of the maps, just that you have a choice, as opposed to google maps with which you could possibly be stuck with an incorrect map.
And regarding satellite view, how would you even imagine volunteers making satellite images? Basically anyone can get a GPS receiver and make maps, but I have yet to see an amateur hobby satellite in orbit. (I guess you could use R/C planes with GPS and cameras, but that would be incredibly time-consuming and not ideal at large scales.) However, even if you could do that, it's just not goal of OpenStreetMap. You can't use satellite images for routing, there is no legend, etc.
And I think that they don't allow external satellite images because of their philosophy on freedom - similarly to you having to explicitly allow installing non-free packages in Debian.
> And regarding satellite view, how would you even imagine volunteers making satellite images?
Across the world, I can't answer. Here in Western Australia, one of the largest single states in the world, there's been digital mapping for two decades now, predating the rise of Google maps.
Data from MODIS satellites is downloaded direct from the sats as they pass overhead and streamed to those with an interest. The better quality data comes from the aerial surveys performed each and every summer over populated areas which produce several thousand digital scans of wet negatives (they may have recently moved to high res digital in the planes, I've been out of the details for a few years).
Google didn't develop their mapping tech initially, they purchased the starting technology from Keyhole, a US based company (iirc), it's worth noting that several international companies had equal or better offerings that were considered including our locally developed technology from ermapper which is now owned by Lecia.
As for volunteer contributions it's been our experience that if you provide data access and annotation tools then many competent people that care about ground accuracy (forestry services, land owners, search & rescue, exploration crews, etc) will happily add value.
I'm not arguing against open data model or users' contributions. On the contrary, I think it's great. I merely wanted to point out that at least for now it's not good enough. I'm also missing route planning/directions, however I may have missed it while browsing the site.
Something that people don't get (as it's a tricky concept) is that OSM isn't primarily the online mapping you see at openstreetmap.org. Just like Linux or GNU isn't about a single distro or use case, OSM is a community and tools for building a variety of different user facing tools from a shared digital mapping infrastructure.
Also, the best of OSM is in places like Germany where in some areas they're mapping down to the level of individual trees and lampost locations as well as where animals are located within zoos.
Using the OSM's online mapping tool is fun. I really enjoyed doing the maps for around my home - it made me look up streets I'd never noticed. I felt I learned a lot about my local area.
Apparently there is an Android app[1] that will let you upload gps tracks and do other editing. I haven't really played with it yet, but I'm also in Atlanta so if OSM is really that bad here I might start helping.
That's awesome aeroevan. This is the whole reason I wrote the post - to encourage others to dive in and start contributing, be it on data gathering and/or on the technology side. The community is great and technically geo is a very interesting space. Please dive in.
The point of OSM is, if you find an error, YOU can fix it. All maps are out of date to some degree. The only question is can you do something about it.
Even inside cities in western Europe, osm is sometimes better than gmaps. More nutty gritty small scale mapping, like pubs, shops, public toilets, etc.
On the other hand, google maps has been showing a road right through our neighbours' living room for the last ten years, while OSM correctly shows all roads and footpaths. Different maps have different errors, look what works for you.
Google Maps was first published in 2005, so it's been doing nothing for the "last 10 years"... And during that time they've changed base map data providers several times in most countries (Navteq -> Tele Atlas -> Google), making it incredibly unlikely that such errors would have persisted for the whole time.
Have you "reported a problem"? The "tile" under my property was misaligned and the road that it showed on the map was about 50' skewed from the satellite view. I did the report a problem thing and they fixed it in 12 hours. I'd let it be like that for years, figuring no one would care...
I might have gotten very lucky there, but it can't hurt to report it, right?
The last time I checked OSM was based on US Census TIGER data. The TIGER data format is extremely quirky and importing the full dataset is non-trivial. I'd imagine they only do it periodically. Add to that the lag between new construction and appearance in TIGER and it's easy to see why OSM has not yet caught up.
The good thing is that, unlike Google Maps, you have complete power to update OSM with the correct information for your locale. Get mapping!
