
Amazon Maps API - ryandvm
http://www.amazonappstoredev.com/2012/09/amazon-maps-api.html
======
whalesalad
Aw I was REALLY hoping to see geocoding + reverse geocoding.

To clarify why, the landscape for that is fairly grim right now. GeoNames
(<http://www.geonames.org>) seems to be the best that i've evaluated thus far.
It'll cost you at scale (not much), but it's international and can find nearby
neighborhoods/cities. Google requires you to display their information on one
of their maps if you use them to geocode or reverse geocode.

Question for iOS devs out there: how are you finding nearby cities in your app
from a lat/lng point? (is even asking this against the ios rules?) Right now I
am using geonames and the results are pretty decent. Works for now!

~~~
aw3c2
Give OpenStreetMap a try. It is free and open. Just they way these things
ought to be. You can set up your own geocoding server with Nominatim:
[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim#Reverse_Geocodi...](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim#Reverse_Geocoding_.2F_Address_lookup)

There is a VM to play around as well:
<http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/AndrewBuck/diary/17698>

Also there is Mapquest's API which uses this:
<http://open.mapquestapi.com/geocoding/>

~~~
cullenking
Note: I have setup a nominatim server. Unless you have 128gb of ram and some
SSD's or 15k SAS drives, be prepared to wait over 1 month. The indexes are
intense and they take, literally, over a month to create if you end up
swapping. To avoid swapping you need at least 128gb of ram....

~~~
aw3c2
That is way to pessimistic and fear mongering in a way.

There are some numbers available at
<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osm2pgsql/benchmarks> (eg getting it into
EC2 in a day for ~30USD). Even just a week would be a pessimistic estimate.

I guess if all you want is geocoding, you could exclude a lot of data before
importing it. Eg landuses without names, lots of single nodes that have
nothing to do with addresses, etc.

~~~
cullenking
Have you set it up? I have...and I am giving you the amount of time it took to
do a world import on data from January. This was on a quad core xeon 5345 with
32gb of ram and a dedicated SSD for swap, with database living on a RAID10 of
8 7200 rpm drives. In other words, the box is decent.

I am not trying to fear monger, I am just trying to say "hey, BTW unless you
have a big hardware budget, you might want to just pay a third party".

~~~
aw3c2
I have not but looking at the numbers I linked there seems to have been
something wrong with your importing.

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jack7890
Worth noting that in July Amazon bought UpNext, an NYC startup doing cool
stuff with 3D maps: [http://gigaom.com/2012/07/02/exclusive-amazon-
buys-3d-mappin...](http://gigaom.com/2012/07/02/exclusive-amazon-
buys-3d-mapping-startup-upnext/)

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seldo
Forgive me for not checking this myself as I'm on a mobile device, but isn't
this just a wrapper to Google's map API?

~~~
lucian1900
On Android, the Google Maps API is part of "Google APIs", not "Android APIs".
Since they have their own Android fork essentially, they get the latter, but
not the former. So now they've built an equivalent for the former.

~~~
seldo
Ah, gotcha. But still Google's map data, not some new source, yes?

~~~
bradddd
Yeah. That's how I read it. They're just making it easier to use on their own
devices.

~~~
mbesto
So the title is terribly misleading?

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alimoeeny
can you see the map anywhere, I mean a sample of how it looks like? I couldn't
find any previews or screenshots.

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TeMPOraL
> Custom Overlays. You can display the locations of businesses, landmarks and
> other points of interest with your own customized markers and pins.

Does this mean there finally is some kind of map app on Android when user can
place one's own marks, paths and places? One of the feature I miss in Google
Maps for Android is being able to put my own data on the map (like, for
example, marking places I plan to visit when going for a trip) and having it
available off-line.

~~~
aw3c2
Don't limit yourself to Google. Try OpenStreetMap apps. For example OruxMaps
or OsmAnd. You can easily load routes and data into those. The underlying data
is free and open and you can contribute easily (and have the changes live in
minutes). OsmAnd has incredibly easy ways to select POIs to highlight.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Thanks, I'll definitely look into it! Does any of those support off-line map
catching? (it's hell of an important feature for me; quite recently GPS +
offline maps saved my butt when I got stranded in the middle of a highway
while returning from Prague via hitchhiking).

~~~
aw3c2
Yes, both support vector maps you can easily get.

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devsatish
Title should be Amazon re-enters the maps game. Remember A9 maps and Amazon
street-view

~~~
saurik
Yeah. Google did their street view project in 2007, but A9 launched it in
2005.

<http://news.cnet.com/2100-1032_3-5833916.html>

"Amazon A9 takes it to the streets"

> The company's A9 search subsidiary is expected on Tuesday to launch a beta
> of A9.com Maps, which lets people see street-level photos of addresses and
> get driving directions.

In fact, Google's Street View was apparently launched a week after A9 shut
down. ;P

[http://appscout.pcmag.com/web-browsers/277151-r-i-
p-a9-maps-...](http://appscout.pcmag.com/web-browsers/277151-r-i-p-a9-maps-we-
hardly-knew-ye)

"R.I.P. A9 Maps; We Hardly Knew Ye"

> The schtick behind A9's take was to have vehicles driving around taking
> pictures of both sides of every major city street in the US. It looked
> promising (if a bit invasive), search for some business or other address and
> even get a photo of what the storefront looked like.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View>

> It was launched on May 25, 2007, in several cities in the United States, and
> has since expanded to include cities and rural areas worldwide.

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playhard
If Amazon can do things for maps like it did for file storage(s3), it would be
phenomenal for developers , as most of the innovations in recent years depends
on location data.

It should not be too costly for Amazon to provide maps and geo data. They
should make map services part of AWS.

~~~
federicoweber
I doubt it will be that cheap, at least to implement a fully fledged service
alla google maps. But sure it will be interesting for a lot of developers.

Amazon builded AWS out of necessity and then transformed it into a public
service. I believe it make sense to them to build a map service in the same
way, giving they they are still a logistic company it could be more than
helpfull for them.

~~~
dchest
_Amazon builded AWS out of necessity and then transformed it into a public
service._

It's a myth.

[http://www.quora.com/Amazon/How-and-why-did-Amazon-get-
into-...](http://www.quora.com/Amazon/How-and-why-did-Amazon-get-into-the-
cloud-computing-business/answer/Werner-Vogels)

~~~
federicoweber
I always believed the opposite, thanks for pointing this out.

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turingbook
What platform is under the hood, Nokia?
[http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/09/17/nokia-confirms-
amazo...](http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/09/17/nokia-confirms-amazon-
licensed-location-platform-maps-geocoding/)

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peteretep
Just a random plug for an open source library I wrote, as I know there are a
lot of you doing geolocation enabled apps: <http://www.zipripjs.com/>

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lowglow
This is a pretty big deal. I wonder where they got their data from? Can people
compete in this space without street view? It's the main reason I use google
maps.

~~~
sbarre
I agree. The loss of Street View is actually one of the biggest downsides of
iOS 6 in my mind.

Although I assume Google will release their own Maps app for iOS, but since
Apple doesn't let you remove their built-in apps, I'm stuck with 2 maps icons,
and no doubt clicking an address in any other app will load the Apple Maps app
and not Google Maps.

edit: ehh sorry I just realized this is pretty off-topic. :-(

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derekerdmann
Is this just a re-implementation of the Google Maps API? Does it have the same
one-MapView-per-process restriction as the Google version?

