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Organic Maps

organicmaps.app

141–150 of 493 posts

Re: Organic Maps

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took the time to go through the whole thread. Your tone was pretty aggressive from the start and throughout the whole conversation. On the developer's side yeah, they did minimize the issue at the beginning and then eventually modified how it works to increase privacy (rotating the UUID every 3 months, permitting to disable it anyway, clearly state it in the TOS etc). You are still downloading a tons of data from t…

Where does it sound aggressive? I read the whole thread as well and was more astounded that harmless messages were marked as "abusive". Maybe if you read into it he sounds a little pissed > It seems unlikely that this is an accident. > It appears that this spyware tracking feature was added by @vshcherb (Victor Shcherb) back in 2015 and has been leaking users' data and travel history (via client IP geolocation) to th…

> was more astounded that harmless messages were marked as "abusive".

I was too, at first, but then I saw that this person refused to acknowledge any misunderstanding on their part or engage with any of the clarifications provided, and continued to spout their one-dimensional rhetoric. There's no "misinformation" marker on Github afaik, so unfortunately the "abusive" marker seems to be the tool available to fade those out.

I'd absolutely find this excessive if this was about a proprietary product, but I'm in support of FOSS developers standing up for themselves and drawing a boundary on how much mental energy they're willing spend on people like this.

Re: Organic Maps

#142
post #100

This was the first time I’d heard of the app, but due to comments in this thread I downloaded it. * Website, ethos: straightforward. “Old internet” vibes, love it. They seem very active, have a presence on every platform, very impressive * The app seems very nice. Simple clear UI. Lots of features. I need to experiment for more than a few minutes but I get the impression it could replace Google Maps for me, especiall…

I've had it for a while, but I don't use it nearly enough. I still rely on Google Maps for most things, until Google Maps lets me down. Which it does mostly when I'm on vacation. Although now that I think about it, Google Maps lets me down on vacation because I'm in unfamiliar territory and I have no idea how to correct for the mistakes it makes. When I'm at home (in Amsterdam) it makes plenty of mistakes too, but I'…

Google displays my street name wrong and there is no way to change it. I've reported it 10+ times and nothing is happening. I don't know where they got that street name from but it's definitely not the "official name" of the street as recorded by the official authorities. And this is in Europe on a street where the google car goes through basically every few years.

I can't even describe the level of frustration this causes because I'm forced to use a non-existant street name for packages because otherwise no courier finds me.

Re: Organic Maps

#143
Great app.

Being a non google user I have used Organic maps for years. I have tried all the open source others but they dont compete for me.

I install E/OS and lineage with Organic maps on all my phones and on all phones my family use.

Its because I am old that I continually get confused with (route to) and (route from) selection when working out my destination route. I always have to do it twice.

There is a selection of voices but I only like one voice. I generally dont need a voice to direct me, I only need to have a quick glimpse at the screen every now and then

I walk/ramble a lot and use .gpx files in organic maps for rambling routes. I also download .gpx files from rambling websites when looking for new rambling routes.

Re: Organic Maps

#144
post #40

I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly. It’s truly staggering how, even when I do everything I can to say: save this journey, don’t delete the map around it, don’t delete the journey, just passively show me where I am next to it, it will gleefully delete everything. I once met their lead designer (who had just changed to work at another FAANG) and… boy was that not a conversati…

Probably the same reason why they are showing hotels in the city I lived all my life, and have my home address set.

It's mindblowing how they don't set meaningful defaults with all that mountain of data they have.

Re: Organic Maps

#145
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had it for a while, but I don't use it nearly enough. I still rely on Google Maps for most things, until Google Maps lets me down. Which it does mostly when I'm on vacation. Although now that I think about it, Google Maps lets me down on vacation because I'm in unfamiliar territory and I have no idea how to correct for the mistakes it makes. When I'm at home (in Amsterdam) it makes plenty of mistakes too, but I'…

Google displays my street name wrong and there is no way to change it. I've reported it 10+ times and nothing is happening. I don't know where they got that street name from but it's definitely not the "official name" of the street as recorded by the official authorities. And this is in Europe on a street where the google car goes through basically every few years. I can't even describe the level of frustration this…

That is really harmful and bizarre. But that also means you basically need to know which delivery service is going to deliver it, because some, like the postal service, may be relying on the real name or the postal code.

Re: Organic Maps

#146
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reliable search is just generally hard to implement for OSM, as it's highly chaotic. There's no single schema forced upon everyone. The same feature can be tagged in multiple ways, which are dependent on the consensus between mappers, country/jurisdiction, culture, particular mapper preference etc. This is especially relevant for addresses and businesses.

Um, the wiki is the single schema forced upon everyone: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org Searching the schema works just fine, it's just hard to find typos and support natural language queries. Google set the standard for searching, we need to remember that we're literally comparing a volunteer project against the world leader in search who also has the money to employ a hundred distributed servers for every query vers…

OSM Wiki is not the mechanically enforced schema, it's just a collection of knowledge about the actual tagging practice. Which is entirely chaotic, and the collective consensus is dynamic - usually the most used tag wins, but there are less used alternatives here and there. There are many good proposals that failed to get traction due to too few people backing them up or for some other reason.

The addresses in particular are heavily dependent on the country and region. And of course OSM is a subject for controversies and stupid edit wars as well, just like Wikipedia.

I'm not criticizing OSM, mind you - just explaining why it's hard to implement a good search in it; you have to constantly adapt your application to what people actually use in the map in different countries/language communities.

Re: Organic Maps

#147
post #99
post #40

I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly. It’s truly staggering how, even when I do everything I can to say: save this journey, don’t delete the map around it, don’t delete the journey, just passively show me where I am next to it, it will gleefully delete everything. I once met their lead designer (who had just changed to work at another FAANG) and… boy was that not a conversati…

I had a bizarre encounter when working there, also Maps related. I lived in the UK at the time and my post code just didn't exist in Google Maps. I did some digging, and found out that in fact no post codes in the UK had been added in quite some time. Eventually I found out why: There was some lead dev on Maps, who refused to allow new imports of UK post code data because he thought they were "wrong". They were seein…

Any info on how could I have my street address corrected on Maps?

They are using a random street name that no one else uses and no matter how many times I report it, they don't change it. It also doesn't matter that I'm a local guide with many, many edits.

Re: Organic Maps

#148
I used this app to navigate around Italy on a cycling holiday. It was marvellous and I'd recommend it to anyone. Donated afterwards as a thank you for making such excellent software.

Re: Organic Maps

#149
post #94
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will be mega off-topic, but: > throttled wifi every Wednesday to encourage empathy As much as slow internet hampered my productivity, I used to have 15 mbit/s download speed until very recently (Germany is behind developing countries, of course, in terms of anything internet), it was good to experience. Before that, when I was living in the countryside, I had 500 KB/s. I know exactly how painful downloading 10,…

Am I just old if I as a developer think that 10mbit/s is plenty enough? I could probably do with 1mbit/s and still be about as productive as I am now.

Low speed is ok, stability matters more imho.

There are old people in my village complaining that the 200 Mbps connection is "horrific" because there is something wrong with their equipment/setup so it cuts out often and leads to buffering on their IPTV.

Re: Organic Maps

#150
post #2

I cannot really express how much praise I have for Organic Maps. It has got me out of the mire a couple of times due to the complete offline capability and paper maps being completely wrong. The OSM base layer is better than a lot of native maps out there. Not only that, you can search for a toilet almost anywhere, including in the middle of nowhere in central Asia, and it found one!

As a cyclist, I use Organic Maps to add drinking water sources, shelters, repair stations, fix biking routes and lanes using just a mobile app to update OSM when I am out and about.

Thanks for that! Editing the map on a bike can be a hassle though. I tried many options and came to conclusion that a 360° camera on the helmet and a physical Bluetooth button to take audio notes is the easiest possible setup.
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