[Wikimedia-l] TomTom does a Britannica

[Marcin Cieslak]

>> Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod at mccme.ru> wrote:
> On Tue, 29 May 2012 13:23:25 +0100, Tom Morris wrote:
>> On 29 May 2012 13:08, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
>>> The difference is that Wikipedia is usable in the real world, 
>>> whereas
>>> OSM, for the most part, is not.
>>>
>>> Yes, TomTom is dying.  But it's because of Google, not because of 
>>> OSM.
>>>
>>
>> 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...
>>
>
>  From my personal experience: Twice per year I travel into middle-size 
> towns of Russia, usually visiting several of then on a single trip. 
> Google maps suck badly; Google's Russian counterpart, Yandex Maps, are 
> better, but they suck as well; TomTom is nonexistent, and OSM had for 
> all places I visited in 2010 (with one exception - for the record, this 
> was the city of Tayga, Kemerovo Region in Siberia) reasonably good maps, 
> often with reliable house numbering.

I can confirm this too - even in a large city of Kiev my coworkers
tried to explain to each other how to reach something using
very inaccurate Google Map. We tried openstreetmap.org (they
didn't now it even exists) and we all were amazed by the level
of detail the city was described. Even all traffic lights and
bus stops were in place as they should.

//Saper