I was skeptical with parent-like satnavs when they were first introduced back then; I still am skeptical today. What's inadequate about "Read map*, pay attention to the road, use brain"? Deryck *I'm a big fan of using the automatic route-planning features of map systems like Google Maps or even TomTom to help me plan routes. It's just that the assumption that a machine is correct about the real world is simply wrong. On 29 May 2012 12:32, Richard Symonds <richard.symonds(a)wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:

On 29 May 2012 13:08, Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: I'd say OSM is beginning to be pretty usable in the real world. It's usable for a lot of things where there's not so much commercial interest in the map data... Wheelchair accessible maps: the work done by wheelmap.org that takes OSM and lets you tag which businesses are wheelchair accessible. Footpaths and cycle paths. There is a market for pedestrian and cycle navigation tools, but it's a small fraction compared to the motorist market. If you go out into rural Britain and want to know where the footpaths, bridleways or cycle paths are, Google won't tell you. You either have to pay Ordnance Survey for a map, or rely on OSM. Even in cities, OSM is very, very useful for pedestrians. Here is Old Street roundabout on Google Maps and OpenStreetMap. http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.525611&lon=-0.086892&zoom=18&a… https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Old+Street,+London&hl=en&ll=51.525… Note how OSM shows the location of underpasses, traffic lights, ATMs, petrol station and bike storage... that's what you get when you are creating maps with a bit of love, care and attention. ;-) -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/>

Tom: Is there a way to find out where OSM isn't very accurate/complete? Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Disclaimer viewable at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Email_disclaimer Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk On 29 May 2012 13:29, Yaroslav M. Blanter &lt;putevod(a)mccme.ru&gt; wrote:

On 29 May 2012 13:38, Richard Symonds &lt;richard.symonds(a)wikimedia.org.uk&gt; wrote: Well, there's OSM "bugs". Basically, there is a way you can file a bug on the map, sort of like how you might leave a note on a talk page (only there is some actual bug semantics) or whack a big warning template on the top of an article. If you are editing in Potlatch, it'll show the bugs as little red ladybugs! ;-) Of course, the only way to really know is to compare OpenStreetMap to reality or to another map or to a data source. Comparing to reality is time-consuming, and is basically what OSMers do every time they go out and trace new paths. Comparing to another map is hard because of copyright issues and getting the data from that map in a usable form. Comparing to a data source is a very limited way of measuring completeness. One way that would be fairly good for the United Kingdom, for instance, would be to get hold of some dataset from the government of every institution of a similar type (hospitals and doctor's surgery information is available from the NHS, for instance, and I believe school data might be available also) and then write a script to see if there is something with a very similar name in the vicinity on OSM. Personally, I find that whenever I look something up about somewhere I know, work or live, OSM is pretty good. There are issues: occasionally I'll find a street name that's wrong. But when using Google Maps, I find all sorts of inaccuracies, mostly derived from SEOers spamming Google Maps. I saw an SEO consultant who managed to get their business listing bang in the centre of the Houses of Parliament once. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/>

Oddly, I checked a family home in Missouri the other day. On Google maps, it's set about 1 mile from where it should be... and on the wrong side of the Missouri river. It shows roads where there are none, and is thoroughly unusable. UPS etc don't deliver to the house because it's not on their navigation systems... https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&safe=off&q=google+maps+336+ros… Of course, OSM is more accurate than any others - compare the link above, with this link, showing a more accurate - but incomplete - map: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=38.396220356226&lon=-91.0328784584999… Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Disclaimer viewable at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Email_disclaimer Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk On 7 June 2012 11:57, Marcin Cieslak &lt;saper(a)saper.info&gt; wrote:

OSM is great. Here in Addis Ababa, street names are not used except in a handful of major thoroughfares; people navigate by landmark. OSM has far more navigable map of the city than googlemaps does. In some areas it labels the street name in the local fashion (e.g. "Road to Gerji Giorgis). Yet it fails in other aspects -- the U.S. embassy is the most recognizable landmark on Intoto street, and is not listed; neither are the French, German, or British embassies. The EU Commission is not listed on Cape Verde st. even though that street is commonly known as "EU Road". Yet, the Brazilian Ambassador's residence, not a particularly well known landmark, is known. Dan Rosenthal On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 3:32 PM, Cristian Consonni &lt;kikkocristian(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote:

The more you play with OpenStreetMap, the more magical ways you start discovering that you can use the data. Two that I've recently found... 1. Water fountains. Here in London, we used to have lots of water fountains. Then modern capitalism found a much better way of delivering water to people: put it in plastic bottles, drive it half way around the country (or world) and sell it to people and a massive profit, who then drink it and throw the plastic bottle away. There are a few water fountains in London though, and they are listed on OpenStreetMap. Any movement to campaign for change requires actual data to start with. 2. Stopped clocks. There are hundreds of beautiful, historical clocks on public buildings across the country. It's possible to mark clocks on OSM, and I've just been discussing on the wiki how we can mark disused clocks. Having the data lets us campaign to have these clocks restarted. I'm also finding that in the process of doing OpenStreetMapping, I take a lot of photos which are also usable on Commons. Quite a lot of them aren't (for copyright reasons or scope reasons or just because they are pretty crappy photographs), but a lot of the time you can find uses for them on Commons. (Just need to go through and write descriptions, categorise and upload.) I heartily recommend any Wikimedians grab themselves the relevant tools for OSMing (which don't necessarily mean a standalone GPS device: things like iPhones and Android smartphones can be used, and you can even go low-tech and print out walking maps), go out and do it. If there's an OSM community in your area, go hang out with them. The systemic bias issues that Wikipedia face also exist on OSM: here in London, the city is richly documented and the OSMers are mostly just tweaking, fixing and maintaining (most of my edits in London are just metadata improvement rather than actually adding any new shape information). But if you go and look at many non-Western countries, you'll find whole towns which just aren't covered at all. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/>

On 29 May 2012 13:08, Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: I'd actually flag smartphones as the culprit. They're the good-enough cheap alternative that's disrupting the satnav business. TomTom's article is actually about an Android app that uses OSM data. Heck, my Blackberry doesn't have a GPS, but I can navigate usably with the Vodafone app that just triangulates off the cell towers. Resolution is terrible (on the order of 100-200 metres), but it turns out to be mostly sufficient. - d.

2012/5/29 David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: Well, the empire strikes back: http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/11/apple-tomtom-ios-6-maps/ :) Another "usable" app for Romania.

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 9:22 AM, Strainu &lt;strainu10(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I just tried osmand. I can't even figure out how to put in an address. I then tried navfree usa. I eventually put in an address (why I can't just type in, or better yet speak, the address, i don't know). But the route it gave me included tolls. When I told it to avoid tolls, it failed to do so. (Either the app is broken, or the information about what roads have tolls is broken.) There's probably some other app I just don't know about. But so far I find it impossible to use OSM data to get the route that I follow every day to work (which Google's navigation app finds readily, and even updates on the fly due to changing traffic conditions). Rather than nitpick over details, I'll go with "much weaker copyleft".

2012/5/29 Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt;rg>: You're limiting yourself to Android, which isn't very fair. Try to get hold of a Garmin device with OSM maps and see if that makes a difference. I suspect it will. (Garmin also has some GPS apps for iPhone, but not for Android. I have no idea if you can load OSM maps on those apps) Strainu

2012/5/29 Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt;rg>: You obviously have already made up you mind, so I doubt anything I'll say will change that, but... ...if you wanna go this way, I wonder if you "go to en.wikipedia.org and just use it" if you want to plant tomatoes in your garden. I know I wouldn't. Strainu

2012/5/29 Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt;rg>: I'm sorry, I don't quite get it. When you said that Wikipedia was usable in the real world, I assumed you meant that you can use Wikipedia as an encyclopedia for reference in different aspects of daily life. Now you're saying that you can somehow use Wikipedia for GPS navigation for automobiles? That appears to be the case. In Romania, as well as most Eastern European countries and some Asian countries, the Google development model is _identical_ to the one used by OSM: crowdsourcing. Before Google Mapper, the number of roads in Romania on Google maps was a staggering... 3. Now the number of paved roads is indeed better than OSM (due mainly to better satellite imagery), but the level of details doesn't even come close, and geolocation is at street level for both. Strainu

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Tom Morris &lt;tom(a)tommorris.org&gt; wrote: Whereas Google is working on whatever the users want. :-) That said, even this is somewhat problematic. There is somewhat of a tension in OSM between micromappers and non-micromappers. Not quite as bad as in Wikipedia between "inclusionists" and "deletionists" - for the most part OSM mappers aren't going to outright delete additional information. But there have been disputes over, for example, whether or not it is okay to include short turning lanes in the lane count. On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:48 AM, Strainu &lt;strainu10(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Nope. I am challenging the following assertion (put in SAT jargon): OSM:tomtom::Wikipedia:Britannica (that is, "OSM is to tomtom as Wikipedia is to Britannica). In the case of Wikipedia:Britannica, they are compared based on their usefulness as encyclopedia articles, not on their usefulness as how-to books. In the case of OSM:tomtom, in the context of the tomtom article, they are being compared based on the their usefulness for GPS navigation for automobiles.

I've never used a professional GPS, but I've found Navit and Gosmore to be quite useful on Android. Interstingly, they have complementary levels of fail. Navit has good voice instructions, but horrible search, while Gosmore has semi-lame voice instructions but very good search. Both of them seem to route just fine for my purposes in South Africa, but I haven't tested toll roads. -- David Richfield [[:en:User:Slashme]] +27718539985