
100M Photos – Geotagged, Connected, and Available for All - lx
http://blog.mapillary.com/update/2016/11/15/100-million-photos-geotagged-connected-and-available-for-all.html
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markovbling
I think it's totally misleading to say that the 100M photos are "available for
all" and described as an "open repository of photos" when there is no simple
way to download the full database of photos.

I understand that they want to charge $99 per month to embed photos since you
could argue they need to pay for hosting but there are no instructions on how
or if it's possible to download the full database of 100M geotagged photos,
except for a "Contact Us" on their pricing page if you want "access to
Mapilliary data".

Crowdsourcing photos by getting people to contribute with a headline "street
level photos for everyone" and then charging for access seems like a hustle.

If the database is publicly available for computer vision research, please
provide a link and make it more explicit!

~~~
hyperknot
I don't understand their headlines either.

They just raised $8M Series A on March, 2016 [1], and their business modell is
basically about trying to serve you those crowdsourced photos made by
volunteeers.

Like $249 / month if you are trying to use those images in your map [2].

There is nothing wrong with that, but I believe it's the opposite of
"available for all" and "open repository of photos", as you've quoted as well.

[1]
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mapillary#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mapillary#/entity)
[2] [https://www.mapillary.com/solutions](https://www.mapillary.com/solutions)

~~~
paulrosenzweig
The photos are CC licensed. I think they plan to own the algorithms on top
extracting value from the photos. But, I totally agree that there should be
simple DB download.

~~~
cooper12
The strange part is that while their legal page confirms the CC license [0],
the homepage specifically says "All photos are free for personal, NGO, and
educational use." which doesn't imply the same freedoms. Sounds like to me
that they're not being completetly honest about the license.

[0]: [https://www.mapillary.com/legal](https://www.mapillary.com/legal)

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bhousel
This is great news, congratulations to the team at Mapillary!

All of this imagery is available immediately for use in OpenStreetMap editors
like iD and JOSM. The OpenStreetMap project values "ground truth" observations
as the most valuable source of information, and these photos let volunteer
mappers easily verify conditions on the ground:
[https://www.mapbox.com/blog/id-mapillary-js/](https://www.mapbox.com/blog/id-
mapillary-js/)

If you haven't mapped with OpenStreetMap yet, give it a try. It _just so
happens_ that this week is OSM Geography Awareness Week:
[http://osmgeoweek.org/](http://osmgeoweek.org/) so there might even be a
mapping event near you.

However you don't need a special event for an excuse to improve OpenStreetMap
- it is a very unique project in that anybody can make meaningful
contributions to the project immediately. Whether you realize it or not, you
are the foremost expert in the world when it comes to - your part of the
world.

I work for Mapbox, maintain OpenStreetMap's in-browser iD editor (I just
released v2.0.0 today!), and I've done a fair bit of streetview imagery
collection for Mapbox. Ask me anything!

~~~
catalinbraescu
Could you please recommend an Android library for displaying vector maps?

~~~
microcolonel
Mapbox GL is pretty great, as I'm sure the Mapbox guy will inform you. The
performance and image quality is top-notch.

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bloomingfractal
On a side note, does anyone know if there's a way to self-host osm? Basically
have my own google maps?

~~~
hyperknot
The best project by far is osm2vectortiles.org. It pretty much allows you to
have a global OSM map on a USB stick, or render it live from a 4 GB VPS.

There is one critical issue which needs to be solved though, Mapbox reached
out to them and asked them to rebuild everything from scratch [2], which means
that it'll be a few more months before it's legally "safe" to use vector tiles
produced by this project.

(disc: I'm just a user)

[1] [http://osm2vectortiles.org/](http://osm2vectortiles.org/) [2]
[https://github.com/osm2vectortiles/osm2vectortiles/issues/38...](https://github.com/osm2vectortiles/osm2vectortiles/issues/387)

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mixmastamyk
What is the license?

~~~
ungzd
CC BY-SA 4.0

~~~
krasin
Where do they state this? A link is welcome.

~~~
detaro
[https://www.mapillary.com/legal.html](https://www.mapillary.com/legal.html)

Also in their API docs: [https://a.mapillary.com/#images-and-
sequences](https://a.mapillary.com/#images-and-sequences)

As far as I know, that license does _not_ include the image metadata, which
really is one of the more interesting parts of an image collection like this.

~~~
toomuchtodo
The image metadata is _not_ covered, which prompted the creation of
OpenStreetView [+].

[+]
[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenStreetView](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenStreetView)

~~~
maxerickson
I tend to speculate that OpenStreetView was started by people inside Telenav
because they thought it would be cool to work on it. They built a feature to
talk to OBD II dongles, which is pretty far afield from image metadata.

We should also probably start calling it the street photo thing that hasn't
been renamed yet.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> I tend to speculate that OpenStreetView was started by people inside Telenav
> because they thought it would be cool to work on it.

A rising tide lifts all boats. I'd just like to see the entire geospatial
stack all the way up to street view open sourced. I'd hate for the world to
start to rely on Mapillary, their funding run out, and then ArchiveTeam has to
go grab all 300TB of data and put it in cold storage until a new interface is
built. Yuck. Let's just do it right from the start.

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Mao_Zedang
I really do not understand the transition slider between images, it is so
ugly.

~~~
mcbits
It looks like an attempt to warp between the images, but it's not matching up
the features correctly. It works a little better in the "around the world"
examples. Some parts just fade or have the wonkywarp effect, but it produces a
smooth transition in other parts.
[http://blog.mapillary.com/update/2016/11/15/around-the-
world...](http://blog.mapillary.com/update/2016/11/15/around-the-world-
in-100-million-photos.html)

~~~
Mao_Zedang
I think those are two different effects being applied, I agree the second one
is working nicely.

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anc84
How big is a full archive of them all?

~~~
maxerickson
I asked in the #osm channel on irc and someone pointed at:

[http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Mapillary](http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Mapillary)

(You can download originals now, that page isn't fully accurate/up to date).

Hundreds of terabytes seems to be a reasonable guess in any case.

