

Open Street Map – The Free Wiki World Map - gnosis
http://www.openstreetmap.org/

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jrockway
Open Street Map is interesting. I decided to check out an obscure suburb where
I used to live (because the data for New York City is obviously going to be
fine). One issue that has been debated there for the last 30 years, it seems,
is extending a freeway called Route 53. The project is called "FAP 342".

Open Street Map shows this thing as built and existing:
<http://osm.org/go/ZVItJYIM->

Very confusing, as it is definitely not built (and probably never will be).

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jonemo
The idea is that you now go in and edit the status of this road from "under
construction" to something more appropriate. The problem of course is that
editing the map [1] is a lot more difficult than editing a Wikipedia page,
which is why less people are participating.

I think it's also worth mentioning that in places other than your suburb, OSM
is better than other publicly available maps, see for example [2].

[1] <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners_Guide_1.3>

[2]
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/mar/28/openstre...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/mar/28/openstreetmap-
google-maps-technologies)

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alpb
Why the heck is this on front page of HN? I am flagging it now. Apparently
there are still people haven't heard of this and this is why reposts will
always be popular.

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gnosis
From the HN Guidelines[1]:

 _"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate
for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to
its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there
is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that
you did."_

[1] - <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
alpb
Thanks for heads up, I didn't know that.

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bbrian
<http://wikimapia.org/> is another good one. Allows for annotating buildings
etc. in the satellite view.

~~~
yellowbkpk
Keep in mind that WikiMapia is breaking Google's terms of use and they don't
release the data they collect. It's a neat project, but completely orthogonal
to OSM.

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leeoniya
i still find it very difficult to read. much harder than google's tiles.

[http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.8432&lon=2.356&...](http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.8432&lon=2.356&zoom=14&layers=M)
vs
[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=48.8432,+2.356&hl=en&...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=48.8432,+2.356&hl=en&ll=48.843254,2.361374&spn=0.096028,0.264187&sll=48.839413,2.354679&sspn=0.096035,0.264187&gl=us&t=m&z=13)

here's a google cache of an analysis from a while back:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:k2wum-J...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:k2wum-
JAzLgJ:geoit.posterous.com/41latitude-google-maps-label-
readability+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
yellowbkpk
Keep in mind that OpenStreetMap is a data project, not a maps.google.com
replacement project. There are plenty of other ways to look at OSM data.
<https://tiles.mapbox.com/newmap> and <http://maps.cloudmade.com/editor> let
you style the data yourself, <http://open.mapquest.com/> lets you route and
search across it. <https://github.com/mapbox/osm-bright> is a good start at
building your own style. <http://osmbuildings.com/> uses CSS to draw 3D
buildings based on OSM data. <http://bl.ocks.org/migurski/5130639> renders it
in your browser with WebGL.

The tiles shown at openstreetmap.org are meant as a tool for mappers to help
with mapping and are not our product.

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lnlyplnt
foursquare switched to OSM last year after google changed its maps API
pricing: [http://blog.foursquare.com/2012/02/29/foursquare-is-
joining-...](http://blog.foursquare.com/2012/02/29/foursquare-is-joining-the-
openstreetmap-movement-say-hi-to-pretty-new-maps/)

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zalew
link to the homepage of openstreetmap??

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mehrzad
I was surprised too. Lots of karma whoring around here?

