[Wikimedia-l] TomTom does a Britannica

[Tom Morris]

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...

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&layers=M

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Old+Street,+London&hl=en&ll=51.525724,-0.08722&spn=0.001799,0.005284&sll=51.022157,0.280645&sspn=0.003638,0.014656&oq=Old+Street,+&hnear=Old+St,+London,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=18

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/>