
It’s Time to Make OpenStreetMap Your Only Street Map - ZeroGravitas
http://stevecoast.com/2014/01/30/its-time-to-make-openstreetmap-your-only-street-map/
======
fab13n
I'm currently trying to switch from Google Maps for my smartphone, not because
maps are more detailed in geek-dense areas (although they are), but because
Google seems to have hired a bunch of drunken lemurs as its usability team.

I mean, I value simplicity, especially on the go, and the OSM-based softwares
I've tried are by no mean perfect. But with recent versions of Google Map, I
have difficulties:

* bookmarking my current location, especially when offline

* getting a scale displayed on my map (a scaleless map was a mandatory Fail in geography classes)

* giving itinerary boundaries through clicks

* sharing a marker as a public URL

* getting rid of research results once I've seen them

And whenever I find a contrived way to do one of those things, more often than
not, a couple of weeks later it's taken out by a new "simplification". I'll
grant you that maps looks nicer and nicer, but it becomes less and less usable
at an alarming speed.

~~~
molind
There is a lot of OSM-based maps, free and paid. I'm developer of one of those
apps: [http://galileo-app.com](http://galileo-app.com) It works offline.
Sharing based on url-scheme and our service. Search result destroyed as soon
as you clear search field. :) And many more features.

Check it and tell here or directly via email info@galileo-app.com your opinion
or ideas about improvement. :)

p.s. It's iOS only.

~~~
ajtaylor
I was super excited until I saw the iOS only. Any chance of an Android
version?

~~~
molind
May be later this year. Now we focused on best possible iOS app. Engine is
written in C++, and relatively easy to port to Android, but app itself also
requires lots of work.

------
latch
Learning more about OSM is something I've been meaning to do for a while, but
I'll commit time and do it, because I think it's a great project.

That said, every time I look at an OSM map, I find them uglier and far less
usable than google maps.

Here's the Sochi example using OSM's Transport layer (which is less
cluttered):

[http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/43.5883/39.7263&layers=...](http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/43.5883/39.7263&layers=T)

vs:

[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=sochi&aq=&sll=37.0625,-95.677...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=sochi&aq=&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=58.294644,99.580078&z=16)

If I had to navigate Sochi, I would overwhelmingly prefer Google's version.
It's cleaner, has better contrast and a number of subtle touches (english
translations, one-way arrows, ...). When I travel, I always download offline
OSM maps, in case, but eagerly get a SIM card with a data plan and switch to
Google Maps (and I suddenly find myself better oriented).

~~~
yellowbkpk
The point of OpenStreetMap is that we provide the data and you provide (or you
use services that provide) an interpretation of the data that's useful to you.

The rendering style you picked is certainly different than Google's. MapQuest
Open's rendering style is pretty darn close to the Google Maps link you
pointed at [0], and other map providers like MapBox let you build maps with
styling how you like it in just a few clicks (including picking English labels
when known). I made one just now [1].

We don't do a great job of making the point when you arrive at osm.org, but we
aren't competing with Google Maps. We're competing with Navteq/Nokia and other
map data providers.

[0]
[http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/43.5883/39.7236&layers=...](http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/43.5883/39.7236&layers=Q)
[1]
[https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/iandees.h675i5pf/page.html?sec...](https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/iandees.h675i5pf/page.html?secure=1#16/43.5882/39.7211)

~~~
dochtman
While I get your point, I don't think it's very productive.

The majority of the people who interact with OSM will get a perception of it
that's biased by the presentation. Even with the MapQuest Open style, Google
Maps, to me, are far more pleasant to look at and easier to understand. The
text seems to be rendered in a better, more readable way, and GMaps has a
better handle on decreasing contrast for things that aren't that important,
allowing more important features to stand out.

You can tell me that I shouldn't care, because you provide such awesome data,
and I'm tempted to agree, but my reptilian brain will give me opposite
feelings every time I try to look at your maps.

~~~
untog
I'm not sure how you define 'productive' in this sense. OpenStreetMap provides
data for people to make maps with. What you do with that data is (gloriously)
up to you.

OSM doesn't _have_ to "sell" their maps. It's the folks like Telenav that need
to make their maps look better.

~~~
vacri
_OSM doesn 't have to "sell" their maps. It's the folks like Telenav that need
to make their maps look better._

They certainly do if " _I’d like it to get OSM to seven billion contributors
in the next year or two_ "

~~~
thaumasiotes
With a world population of seven billion, that seems a little ambitious...

------
pekk
Criticizing OSM is at least as hazardous as criticizing Wikipedia, but...

Setting aside ideological purity, the actual rationality of switching solely
to OSM depends on the actual quality and freshness of its data. And most of
the world with money in play is more likely to follow rationality than
ideological purity here.

But with regard to data quality, OSM is encumbered its own policy. OSM cannot
(or refuses to) make use of high-quality bulk data from outside, regardless of
how that data was licensed. Automation allows more frequent updates with a lot
less manual labor as input - but OSM requires contributors to manually trace
shapes in their weird browser app. Even where plenty of excellent liberally
licensed data is available, OSM insists on making an army of unpaid monkeys
re-make the SAME data in perpetuity.

That puts its pipeline at a permanent disadvantage to companies building
proprietary datasets, which can take advantage of all kinds of automation. OSM
simply isn't doing as much as it could to verify its data and stay fresh, and
so it isn't doing as much as it could to end the status quo of proprietary
data. Even if OSM reaches a usable state at a given moment, the world keeps
changing to invalidate previously traced data, and OSM's policy ensures it
will always be playing catch-up no matter who wants to donate data, because
all the data has to come through this dopey manual process.

~~~
chippy
This viewpoint seems to be based on the assumption that proprietary datasets
are going to be more up to date than a crowdsourced dataset. Having worked
with proprietary datasets, often this assumption is wrong as these datasets
(which could be eligible for importation) are often surprisingly poor quality
and out of date. If a company can still make money selling their datasets to
their same customers, there is no incentive for them to spend resources to
keep it up to date.

What this viewpoint does hint at is it's comparison to Wikipedia, and the
differences in geospatial data of a current map of the world. Pekk is correct,
an area in OSM needs to be continually updated and refreshed, and this
requires appropriate tools and a user base. Both of these exist or are being
improved upon with OSM.

For example, work has happened re: Monitoring of changes, comparisons with
imagery, map bug reports, automated feeds, academic and industry reports and
evaluations of the quality with proprietary and national mapping agency
datasets.

~~~
stephen_g
This is very true. My country's Government had an issue with a major internet
project where they bought the best commercial address database available.
Turns out that hundreds of thousands of addresses in there were incorrect, and
tens of thousands just didn't exist. Caused huge problems.

Proprietary geospatial data can be very hit and miss. If you assume that the
majority will be high quality, you're setting yourself up for
disappointment...

------
throwaway_yy2Di
Tangent for bored hackers: you can torrent the entire OpenStreetMap dataset
right now. It's only 23 GiB, in a simple format stored as protocol buffers.

[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm#BitTorrent](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm#BitTorrent)

[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/PBF](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/PBF)
(format documentation)

[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features)
(common tag strings)

edit: This was my first render from this weekend,
[http://i.imgur.com/vD9d39W.png](http://i.imgur.com/vD9d39W.png) :D

~~~
frik
Apparently, most readers clicked on the first torrent (32GB), instead of the
compressed one (22GB) below.

The deep link to the 22GB Version: [http://osm-
torrent.torres.voyager.hr/files/planet-latest.osm...](http://osm-
torrent.torres.voyager.hr/files/planet-latest.osm.pbf.torrent)

~~~
ekianjo
what can you use for viewing such maps offline?

------
jaryd
Does anyone use OpenStreetMap on Android with any success? I'd be grateful to
hear of any maps/directions apps that I can use as a replacement in this
category.

~~~
karl42
I'm using [http://osmand.net/](http://osmand.net/)

The UI is not perfect, but it has lots of useful features, like bike
navigation and offline usage.

~~~
justincormack
The UI is horrendous! I would use OSM but it is so terrible I can't. I use it
when I dont want to go online, but it is truly awful.

~~~
okasaki
"Horrendous!" "truly awful"? Can you elaborate on what exactly is wrong with
OsmAnd's UI to elicit such a strong reaction? I use it myself and don't have
any problems with it. It seems about the same as any mobile app with
comparable complexity.

~~~
justincormack
To search you press the menu, select search, select search by name (not the
top item), get a box called "filter" with an almost invisible search button
and where enter does not do a search. If it doesn't find any matches it just
leaves a blank screen as if nothing has happened. Oh and if you pressed return
first it wont find anything as the carriage return is part of the query so it
doesn't match.

When I finally get the results of my query for "Hammersmith" it tells me that
309km away (some mistake, more like 3.9km) there is "Subway Station District
Line;Hammersmith & City Line", and then the same result repeated around 150
times some with slightly different naming, and at varying distances from
309-328km away before it gets to other results in Hammersmith.

And you are trying to use this on a phone in the rain, you just give up and go
back to google maps even though the data is worse.

EDIT: And if you select one of these it appears to be in Barking, as it found
every station on the Hammersmith and City Line, although that is not 300km
long.

~~~
okasaki
Granted, I've never used it in a hurry. Also, my previous experience with maps
was Garmin's City Navigator, which I thought was okay, but it was much worse
than OsmAnd. I actually still use have it as a backup because it can run
continuously for two days on two AA batteries.

------
jordan0day
One thing I really like about OSM is the fact that it accepts pull requests
from anybody. For example, I live on a road that ends in "Street", but for
whatever reason, Google's online maps have it marked as "Lane". This results
in delivery drivers and service people often going to the wrong address. The
street name was wrong on OSM, but I submitted a pull request and saw the fix
implemented immediately.

Interestingly, Apple Maps, Mapquest, and Bing maps all have the right street
name. After I submitted the PR to OSM, it's correct now, too. Only Google Maps
is still wrong, which is unfortunate, since that seems to be the one most
people rely on (especially w.r.t phone GPS's). I've had several instances of
friends calling, confused on how to reach my house, after their Google Maps
App took them to a house a few blocks away.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Have you tried making the change in Google Maps? I've made 10+ changes in the
last 2 years, and have found their QA team to be very responsive.

~~~
jordan0day
Yes, I just did earlier this morning -- for some reason it never occurred to
me to try until I saw this article.

------
rburhum
I have been using OSM for 7 years and I really love the project. Nevertheless,
the biggest issue I have when it is compared to GMaps is not the content nor
rendering (those are relatively straightforward to change)... it is the
geocoder + routing. There is not a good geocoder for OSM, period. Until we can
put an address, like we can in GMaps, and get a pin in the right location, it
will always be an option that is not a 100% replacement. Same with routing.

Don't get me wrong, it has its uses, but those two components are too critical
to ignore or even advocate for full replacement.

~~~
ris
Until OSM _has_ all of the addresses, it can't geocode to them. So your
comment doesn't make much sense.

~~~
eurg
It is usually also much more finicky with regard to address syntax. Google
Maps does a good job handling spelling mistakes or ambiguous addresses. OSM is
not on par with GM, yet.

~~~
rmc
Yeah, I've heard that. GM is better at lower qualitys. But then search is
google's main skill, and addresses can be all over the place...

------
virtualritz
Typical use case for me: hitting on Google Maps to find addresses via venue
names; 99% of the time. I.e. I enter the name of the restaurant etc + some
fuzzy data, like part of town or name of the city. This just works.

Last time I checked (just now), this still didn't get me any useful results
from OSM for the European capitals I frequent (Rome, Paris, Berlin). I guess
it is even worse for smaller cities.

Yes, there is some venue/business data. But it is too sparse, at least for
most of Europe, for OSM to be a useful replacement for Google Maps -- even in
the medium term.

The question would be: how could this be rapidly improved? For example, I
entered probably two dozen places that were missing on Google Maps, in the
past. While this data is now Google's, I entered it, originally. What's more,
if I would be adding it again, to OSM, I'd certainly enter the same data.

I wonder what the legal perspective would be if everyone crawled "their" data
(i.e. the data they personally entered) from Google maps and forwarded it to
OSM.

~~~
untog
What you're talking about is geocoding, not mapping. OSM doesn't even have its
own geocoder, and I'm yet to find one that gets anywhere near to Google's
results. Sadly.

~~~
virtualritz
Not sure I get what you mean. The 'Edit' function on openstreetmap.org lest me
add exactly this kind of information. So they do provide it, or not?

~~~
maxerickson
Sort of. The search box on the OSM.org site is more a data inspector than it
is a search nearby box.

So going to a place and searching for 'fastfood' returns objects from around
the world based on the name matching 'fastfood'. A more structured input, like
'fast food, detroit, mi' returns something more sensible (but it is still
searching the city limits of Detroit, not the metro area).

So the machinery there provides information, but it is not set up for end user
situations.

~~~
rmc
_(but it is still searching the city limits of Detroit, not the metro area)._

Not necessarily. It depends on what the geocoding software does. It might use
rigid "city" borders, or might not. In Europe, we don't have these rigid "city
borders", so lots of software has to cope with that.

------
pothibo
I first encountered OpenStreetMap 2 years ago and was amazed at how precise it
was. Moreover, the editor is simply awesome. I had a road opened last year
next to where I live and it took me about 2 minutes to register, load the
editor, make the change and save it.

------
junto
If I could find a replacement for Google Maps that hooked into Google
StreetView, I'd be a happy chappie. I find Google Street View and amazing
tool, but want to move away from the maps part.

I refuse to install Google Maps on iOS, because every time I've installed it
on our FAMILY iPad, it keeps driving the user to sign in with MY account,
which it appears to have weaseled out of the sandboxed Google+ for iOS. Sorry,
but firstly I don't want to have a search history. Secondly I don't want the
search history of the rest of family to be linked to my Google account.

I understand that some people might want to switch this on as a feature, byt I
don't, and Google have designed the app, so that it seems like it won't work
without signing in. A very dark UI pattern if you ask me. This whole
assumption of one-device-one-person is naive.

~~~
cbaleanu
I was quite surprised to see there actually are a lot of competitors for
Google StreetView:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_of_Google_Street_Vi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_of_Google_Street_View)

------
legulere
The data isn't the problem of Openstreetmap. What's missing is one go-to site
with a nice rendering that doesn't try to show off all features and offers a
similar feature set as google maps (searching for locations, shops,
navigation).

~~~
liotier
You forget the essential feature of Google Maps: advertising - the reason for
giving you the other features.

Map data is free but serving maps is a service... Either you pay for it,
suffer advertising or do it yourself - the first and last options are
available from Openstreetmap.

------
brudgers
I would use Open Street Map, except that I find aerial photographs are often
an invaluable aid to navigation because they provide a more complete model of
facts on the ground. Aerial photographs allow better recognition of landmarks
- how wide is the road, how big is a building's parking area, does the address
resolve to a football pitch?

The level of geographic information just isn't there to make it a viable first
choice for me because orientation is more difficult.

------
Vvector
My home address doesn't exist in OSM. Actually it does exist, but in the wrong
city. This is due to the use of TIGER data, which doesn't align with Post
Office addresses. So using my address, no one can find my house. And while I
can edit the map to move the road where needed, I cannot change the city.

Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc, all have no problem finding my house.

~~~
yellowbkpk
Our existing geocoders don't do a great job (geocoding is a _hard_ problem),
and have an especially hard time at guessing containment in situations like
you describe.

One solution is to map your house using iD (the default editor when you click
the "Edit" button on osm.org) and add the full address, including the city and
postcode. With that extra information, the geocoder should be able to find
your address. Feel free to e-mail me if you've got more questions.

------
mwexler
Curious to understand just how Telenav will try to make money off of OSM: Will
they be the "Red Hat" of OSM? Will they sell "custom add-ons"? What might they
do to both benefit the community and make money from usage? Could be great
improvements, or could become known as "that day that OSM started to die"...

~~~
yellowbkpk
TeleNav sells navigations apps to smartphone users. They use OpenStreetMap
data for some of those apps (and presumably want to use it in all their apps),
so they're interested in seeing OSM prosper.

~~~
officemonkey
So they hope to outsource their QC to bring OSM's data up to Navteq?

If that's the case, they need to Gameify this pronto, like Duolingo does with
crowd-sourced translations.

~~~
yellowbkpk
No, they're adding their QC resources to OSM's existing 20k+ monthly active
editors and not only improving the map for their own use, but for others as
well.

------
reustle
I'm currently working on a project that uses google maps in a few places. The
main reason I'm not using OSM is gmaps.js [0]. Ideally I will find / create my
own simple wrapper like this on top of OSM in the near future

[0] [http://hpneo.github.io/gmaps/](http://hpneo.github.io/gmaps/)

~~~
quarterto
Leaflet.js[0] is pretty nice.

[0]: [http://leafletjs.com/](http://leafletjs.com/)

~~~
stevekemp
Although I stalled recently I had a great time using Leaflet.js on my
Edinburgh pub-exterior site:

[http://edinburgh.io/pubs/](http://edinburgh.io/pubs/)

------
SeanLuke
"Hardware Stores in Alexandria VA"

* Google Maps: everything you'd ever want, and correct.

* Open Street Map: a Home Depot in Riverside County, CA, and a Lowes which apparently resides inside the exact same building.

It is _not_ time for me to make OpenStreetMap my only street map.

~~~
ris
You've now added the ones you know about, I trust?

~~~
cbaleanu
Not sure I follow sir

~~~
ris
OSM only gets better when people add their knowledge to it. Add your knowledge
of hardware stores in your town and it will be less for the next person to
complain about.

------
clarry
I've been wanting to become an OSM contributor for a long while now as I like
the idea, and there's lots of low-hanging fruit as far as map coverage of my
area goes (in osm, it's just plain bad). I also like geocaching, which seems
like it would go hand-in-hand with mapping.

But I still haven't found an OSM editor that doesn't suck. And right now I
don't have the time to write my own, even though I've considered it more than
once...

~~~
stephen_g
I've found the iD editor on openstreetmap.org to be very good. It's been the
main editor since May last year.

Potlatch 2 was the main one before that, which wasn't as good but was
adequate.

------
Semiapies
Not living in Sochi, the comparison is less convincing for me:

[http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/30.33393/-95.47847](http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/30.33393/-95.47847)
[https://www.google.com/maps/preview/@30.3339269,-95.4784644,...](https://www.google.com/maps/preview/@30.3339269,-95.4784644,17z)

Not to mention that searching for "Conroe, TX" and taking the first, correct-
sounding result got me ~10 miles south of city limits.

Now, Google has a couple of oddities, here (those two businesses apparently on
the median between the freeway and the access road!), but the road data is
more accurate and detailed (including street names).

I've done some editing on wikis, but I'm not going to try to jump in and
correct _that_ gap.

~~~
rmc
_Not to mention that searching for "Conroe, TX" and taking the first, correct-
sounding result got me ~10 miles south of city limits._

The search box on the OSM front page uses Nominatim, which also has it's own
website. Here's the search results for that:
[http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=Conroe%2C+TX...](http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=Conroe%2C+TX&viewbox=-119.54%2C47.7%2C119.54%2C-47.7)
You can see the 2 results there
[http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=4274...](http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=42740484)
and
[http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=9815...](http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=98157421)
There's a "Report Problem" button to help debug issues like this. Feel free to
submit a bug!

I think Nominatim tries to rank things based on how long their Wikipedia
article, the the item to the south (that was at the top), is the one that
links to Wikipedia. TBH it looks like bad mapping whoever put that there

------
tnuc
I want to like OpenStreetMap, I really do...

If I see a place on the map.. Why can't I click on it? I can't get the
address, telephone number, website etc.?

And I see and picture of a shopping basket? What is it? I also see a cocktail
glass, it's a fucking mystery.

~~~
morganherlocker
Not intuitive, but zoom in and hit the edit button. You should now see all the
data as vectors. Click on anything and you will see all of the metadata.

~~~
rmc
Or zoom in and show the "Data" layer

------
Camillo
Google Maps's killer feature for me is public transit information. It would be
nice if there were an open public transit schedule database that interfaced
with OSM.

~~~
Vik1ng
Which outside the US isn't that great. In Germany it only has the railway
data, but no buses or trams, which makes up most of the public transport in
smaller cities and even important connections in larger ones.

~~~
prewett
I can't speak for anywhere else, but Google's public transit information for
Beijing is excellent. Even has correct and complete information for bus
routes. (Use ditu.google.cn for best location results, may require an IP
address inside the PRC)

------
yuvadam
I've completely migrated recently from using Google Search, and use DuckDuckGo
exclusively, even if sometimes I get results of lower quality. I'm willing to
compromise for better privacy.

I have a sneaking suspicion that once finally I replace Google Maps with OSM
there won't be any compromises to be made.

~~~
Trufa
Out our firm, we do a Navigation system specialized for bikes, and TBH, for
little side-roads and everything that is not the main roads, OSM seems to win.

I would say that where some services are lacking in that regard is geocoding,
the spelling correction at Google is pretty hard to beat, addresses are
incredibly hard to parse and Google has definitely and edge in that sense.

------
sehugg
OSM data came in handy in Europe. Their public toilet database seems pretty
complete.

I'd love to have more complete metadata. No reason in 2014 I shouldn't be able
to query pet-friendly hotels near brewpubs near bike trails.

~~~
rmc
Brew pubs and bike trials are mapped. I dunno about pet friendly, but that can
vary by country. IM(limited)E Austria is quite pet friendly (pets in hotels
and all that), so Austrians mightn't tag that.

------
hrjet
I like OSM and have also contributed to it. However, I would be wary of using
OSM for navigation. It's very easy for someone to mis-edit (accidentally or
maliciously). Also, it is difficult to revert a mis-edit because, unlike
Wikipedia, the data is not chunked into pages and there are no simple textual
diffs which a non-geek can review.

------
Uchikoma
When in Tokyo lately I've used OSM and found it suprisingly good. What I did
miss compared to the Google Maps app is the direction the device is pointing
towards.

Routing would also be nice :-)

~~~
yellowbkpk
Routing is provided by external tools like [http://map.project-
osrm.com](http://map.project-osrm.com) and
[http://open.mapquest.com/](http://open.mapquest.com/). On a mobile device you
can use OsmAnd to navigate.

~~~
Uchikoma
Thanks for the links, didn't know.

------
canistr
The map comparison tool is quite excellent. I'd love to use this tool for
testing generic sites.

[http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?lon=39.7203&lat=43.58538&zoom=...](http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?lon=39.7203&lat=43.58538&zoom=15&num=2&mt0=mapnik&mt1=google-
map)

------
blueskin_
I wish I could.

Google search and maps are the only google products I still use (well, plus
youtube, but no account, and blogger, but only reading), and I use duckduckgo
intermittently instead of google search, but OpenStreetMap just isn't good
enough yet, primarily by nit having yet found a halfway decent mobile app.

~~~
collyw
I did like Navfree. It wasn't perfect, but neither is Google maps. Usually if
one was not finding things correctly, the other would.

Now the application has gone to the trouble of upgrading itself on my phone,
without upgrading the actual maps, so it was completely useless last time I
tried to use it.

------
rwmj
As a small data point, I used Open Street Map [OSMAnd+] only when I was in
Brussels at FOSDEM this weekend. I used it _a lot_ and it was absolutely
superb. Obviously this is a major city, but I've also used it in the wilds of
the Japanese countryside and found it to be equally reliable.

------
gchokov
The map is still far from complete in my part of the world, so I can't really
switch.

~~~
yellowbkpk
Where are you? Let's make it better for you.

~~~
gchokov
Very nice of you. Here I am -
[http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/42.0331/24.3015](http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/42.0331/24.3015)

~~~
yellowbkpk
Hmm. You've found one of OSM's many achille's heels. You're in a part of the
world that doesn't have very good satellite imagery coverage, so the only way
we can map is using recorded GPS data.

You can help by wandering around with your smartphone's GPS turned on and
uploading the traces to OSM.org for others to map with.

~~~
gchokov
I will certainly do it. Thanks for the tip!

------
xacaxulu
Anything that works towards resetting the balance of power against Google is
fine by me. Not to mention I've found that Google Maps has given me erroneous
directions more frequently than a few years ago.

------
bad_user
The article mentions that Telenav acquired Skobbler, the makers of a pretty
sweet maps app that uses OSM. I've been using it on my Android for navigation
for several months now:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.skobbler.f...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.skobbler.forevermapng&hl=en)

I do hope that this app won't die. It's polished, it's user friendly, it's
based on OSM (which for me is a feature) and worked very well for me.

------
nantes
Seems to be having load issues -- CoralCDN link
[http://stevecoast.com.nyud.net/2014/01/30/its-time-to-
make-o...](http://stevecoast.com.nyud.net/2014/01/30/its-time-to-make-
openstreetmap-your-only-street-map/)

------
DenisM
It would be nice to have an app that pulls data from Google Maps (or Apple
Maps), and at the same time sends location trace to Open Street Maps. That way
I could use high-quality maps and still support the OSM project with raw trace
data.

------
larcher
"I’d like it to get OSM to seven billion contributors in the next year or
two."

Surely that's a typo. Nearly all the world's population _contributing_ to, not
just using, OSM? Seven million maybe?

------
jtth
It can't even find my city given city and state, in a state capital! I'll
switch just as soon as it learns where the United States is.

~~~
yellowbkpk
Can you give the search string you typed? As I mentioned elsewhere, geocoding
is a _hard_ problem, and we've certainly not solved it. We can make it better
by improving the data, though. I'd love to make your search better next time.

------
agumonkey
The 'future' google maps is also too taxing on my (2006) laptop. OSM UI is as
good as the current google maps. Good reason to move.

~~~
agumonkey
For a reason I can't edit my comment. I forgot to mention that the future
google maps doesn't seem to show a distance reference, the UI follows the
shift from digital map to mapped services.

ps: I wonder if there's an open, possibly smartphone/crowdsourced picture
database to fill the lack of photographic/streetview data in OSM. Thinking
about reconstructing algorithm as shown by Microsoft Research labs.

------
truncs
The problem with OSM (as compared to wikipedia) is that there is less
awareness about the project and contributing to OSM has to be made a lot
easier. Also it needs to have enough eyeballs per sq. mile to verify that the
changes made are actually good. In some places like Melbourne (and someone
mentioned this earlier) OSM is horrendous.

------
nodata
> It's Time to Make OpenStreetMap your only street map

I can't. Your new app is US only, and osmand is good but not good enough.

------
ntoshev
I wonder if there is a way to integrate in OSM automatically gathered data
from users smartphones, like Waze does. There seem to be incentives to
smartphone app makers to provide that.

Is there any nice description of the ecosystem around OSM data? How do all
these companies providing routing or geocoding make money?

------
nollidge
It's way too slow for me. Taking 20-30 seconds to fill in map tiles while I'm
panning around.

~~~
aw3c2
Where are you located? Is your connection fast enough?

~~~
nollidge
Yes, my connection is fast enough.

~~~
aw3c2
Still interesting where you are. OSM serves the standard style from multiple
locations:
[http://dns.openstreetmap.org/tile.openstreetmap.org.html](http://dns.openstreetmap.org/tile.openstreetmap.org.html)

~~~
nollidge
Milwaukee, WI, USA (about 100 miles north of Chicago)

------
zoomerang
I live 10 minutes from the center of the third largest city in Australia.

OpenStreetMaps still doesn't have street numbers.

Where data is good, OpenStreetMaps is a fantastic tool. But for the rest of
the world - it's utterly useless.

~~~
stephen_g
There are lots of street numbers around parts of Brisbane (probably some of
the most comprehensive are around Fairfield to South Brisbane). It's pretty
easy to add - I traced my neighborhood and added address data in a couple of
hours.

If you want to make the world a better place, you could do some around your
house as well!

~~~
zoomerang
I certainly could - and might - but the lack of such information is why OSM s
still not a viable replacement for commercial maps. (Yet).

------
Yuioup

      "Why the world needs OpenStreetMap"
    
      "It's Time to Make OpenStreetMap your only street map"
    

I think somebody is trying to say something here.

------
_ZeD_
A thing I don't about telenav it's the fact they only release us-only
applications. Why can't I use their app? The OSM maps are global...

------
csmithuk
Well when it works properly for more than a week at a time (export is
currently randomly broken) and has turn by turn navigation, yes.

So no.

------
poopsintub
I need traffic data to switch, right?

