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How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

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Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#61

Post by lucideer »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #60
lucideer wrote: post #34

This is great, but I'm surprised to see Apple featured so prominently in the title here alongside Facebook and Microsoft. Apple has an internal volunteer programmer whereby employees can choose to spend their time contributing to OSM—part of employee benefits (which is nice), whereas Microsoft and Facebook are actually contributing mapping data the company has created/collected to OSM. Furthermore, just 2 of the 3 li…

> just 2 of the 3 listed companies are major sponsors of OSM events Don't assume that because a company isn't listed, it doesn't/hasn't contributed.

> Don't assume that because a company isn't listed, it doesn't/hasn't contributed.

That is the list of all sponsors for that particular event. Apple did speak at the event, though their talk[0] was the only one not recorded, photos were forbidden, and they uploaded no slides afterward. The topic was their employees' volunteerism.

[0] https://2018.stateofthemap.org/2018/T081-Working_with_the_Co...

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#62

Post by lucideer »

thinkingemote wrote: post #52
lucideer wrote: post #34

This is great, but I'm surprised to see Apple featured so prominently in the title here alongside Facebook and Microsoft. Apple has an internal volunteer programmer whereby employees can choose to spend their time contributing to OSM—part of employee benefits (which is nice), whereas Microsoft and Facebook are actually contributing mapping data the company has created/collected to OSM. Furthermore, just 2 of the 3 li…

Apple now employee their own teams to do mapping

Do you have a source? I'd be interested to look at the work they're doing.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#63

Post by morganherlocker »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #16
danpat wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here at Mapbox we're doing navigation on OSM with traffic data - we collect our own telemetry, and use it to guide OSM-based routing. There are numerous Android/iOS apps using our API that you could use, or you could build one yourself.

Please elaborate. From where and how do you get the traffic data from, and is it sufficient?

Our traffic data is generated in house using anonymized location telemetry from our SDKs, much like most other traffic providers. The live speed predictions we generate for congestion and ETA models are competitive globally, providing the most accurate ETAs available in many parts of the world. Our accuracy today is particularly strong in the US, when compared to similar services.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#64

Post by seba_dos1 »

zylepe wrote: post #50
ghaff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's pretty weak for hiking trails in the US in my experience; OSM is far from perfect but it's much better. They're both significantly worse than maps focused on hikers.

I recently switch https://onthegomap.com from google to OSM for walking paths between points. The trail quality is much better where I live (Massachusetts) but I have been getting a lot of complaints from people all over the world that it no longer has their trails. I wonder what the lowest friction way to get my users to help contribute trails to OSM would be?

A built-in editor that's specifically targeted to what interests them.

There's an app called OpenVegeMap which shows you vegetarian and vegan restaurants nearby. It also allows you to add and edit this information. Found a nice vegan bistro? You're just two clicks away from adding a missing tag about it to OSM. Just this and nothing else.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#65

Post by agentdrtran »

nickysielicki wrote: post #18
ucaetano wrote: post #2

This is competitive pressures at work, similarly to IBM and other's investment in Linux in the early 2000's as a way to place competitive pressure on MS/Windows. If you're not the leader in the field, and won't be able to catch up just by investing, you try to make the leadership in the field (Google's) irrelevant. If the 2nd-best-by-small-margin base map info is open, having the best one isn't a competitive advantag…

Second best? At least in my experience, OSM data is leaps and bounds better than Google Maps in every way possible, and it has been that way for a couple years now. The reason that I still use Google maps is that it's fast and well-integrated with my phone, and it has a lot of added features on top of the actual mapping that makes it very useful --- things like location sharing when you're on a longer road trip, crea…

Google Maps beats OSM with absolutely no content in regards to POI data and navigation.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#66

Post by orblivion »

nickysielicki wrote: post #18
ucaetano wrote: post #2

This is competitive pressures at work, similarly to IBM and other's investment in Linux in the early 2000's as a way to place competitive pressure on MS/Windows. If you're not the leader in the field, and won't be able to catch up just by investing, you try to make the leadership in the field (Google's) irrelevant. If the 2nd-best-by-small-margin base map info is open, having the best one isn't a competitive advantag…

Second best? At least in my experience, OSM data is leaps and bounds better than Google Maps in every way possible, and it has been that way for a couple years now. The reason that I still use Google maps is that it's fast and well-integrated with my phone, and it has a lot of added features on top of the actual mapping that makes it very useful --- things like location sharing when you're on a longer road trip, crea…

I'm a fan of OSM. Where I am now (New Hampshire), Google beats the heck out of OSM if I'm searching for establishments.

(It's okay though, I'm happy to work toward changing that.)

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#67

Post by lucideer »

jaakl wrote: post #32

There is also some controversy around it : the big players do data mixing from different sources, which is not strictly compliant with OSM licenses. Also some say that their bulk editing creates nice map data, but harms local potential mapping communities, with early case of Netherlands where AND contributed map data resulted to no real manual map updates afterwards. So some say that community, not map must come firs…

> There is also some controversy around it

Do you have a link to some commentary on this?

I'm aware of MS's generated US building footprints[0] but this hasn't (yet) been integrated into OSM (largely I think due to quality and bulk-import etiquette worries). And also StreetSide[1] but this isn't imported into OSM itself, rather it's displayed as an aid for editors.

Facebook is looking at contributions similar to MS's US building footprints (but for roads), but again this is mainly around tooling and generation rather than data sources, and is speculative as far as I've seen.

[0] https://github.com/Microsoft/USBuildingFootprints

[1] https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/pull/5050

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#68

Post by muglug »

nextos wrote: post #6
orblivion wrote: post #3

Seems like OSM has a future. This is great. Only sad thing is perhaps some day we won't be able to have the fun of making contributions ourselves, if the big companies handle all that for us like Google does. In the mean time, though, I can make an easier case to people as to why they should care about this, since it's now used by Apple and Pokémon Go.

OSM worked great for me on newly built streets in Cambridge UK, where Google Maps had zero cartography. The only major disadvantage of OSM-derived applications is the lack of real-time traffic information. Google Maps harvests data from phones inside cars and some car navigation systems. They also buy it from third parties. http://opentraffic.io/ is trying to do some data harvesting, but it's still not very good. Ano…

> OSM worked great for me on newly built streets in Cambridge UK, where Google Maps had zero cartography.

Cambridge is incredibly atypical, though, given its large number of smart people without much money.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#69

Post by arctux »

morganherlocker wrote: post #63
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please elaborate. From where and how do you get the traffic data from, and is it sufficient?

Our traffic data is generated in house using anonymized location telemetry from our SDKs, much like most other traffic providers. The live speed predictions we generate for congestion and ETA models are competitive globally, providing the most accurate ETAs available in many parts of the world. Our accuracy today is particularly strong in the US, when compared to similar services.

Do you know if Mapbox has any plans to work with the World Bank's OpenTraffic[0]?

[0]: http://opentraffic.io

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#70

Post by maxerickson »

zylepe wrote: post #50
ghaff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's pretty weak for hiking trails in the US in my experience; OSM is far from perfect but it's much better. They're both significantly worse than maps focused on hikers.

I recently switch https://onthegomap.com from google to OSM for walking paths between points. The trail quality is much better where I live (Massachusetts) but I have been getting a lot of complaints from people all over the world that it no longer has their trails. I wonder what the lowest friction way to get my users to help contribute trails to OSM would be?

Have an opt in for sharing their gps traces and maybe get them to take and share georeferenced pictures of trail signs.
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