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Organic Maps

organicmaps.app

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Re: Organic Maps

#461

Post by Ylpertnodi »

okok3857 wrote: post #314
nani8ot wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I especially like about Organic Maps and OSM in general is how searching for "water" shows nearby water fountains. Depending on the country and region it helps if your running out of water while hiking. It's not necessarily the best water but at least where I live drinking it is usually not a problem (especially if your drinking a small amount). Water is also listed in the categories tab next to WiFi, Pharmacies…

This was an incredible aspect of the app to have when in Rome this summer! So many public water sources, and it was so, so hot....

The app 'fountains in italy' is pretty cool and has saved me on a couple of trips there. Especially locating a fountain on a bridge(!) at Lake Garda...i was stood almost next to it, it was hidden by the people walking past.

Re: Organic Maps

#462

Post by MagicMoonlight »

sanderjd wrote: post #212
tazjin wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this is actually a really perfect demonstration of why you often shouldn't attribute things to malice which can be explained by incompetence. This is on my mind a lot when I see speculation about why google (or other large organizations) does various things. It's just a bunch of human beings with egos and biases and blind spots and imperfect information. Mistakes are made.

But that is malice. They're specifically fucking over an entire country because they believe that post codes shouldn't be that way. They know otherwise.

Re: Organic Maps

#463

Post by MagicMoonlight »

I really want a car navigation app that actually routes you correctly.

Apps like Waze have fallen for the "AI" meme where they take a limited data set of people driving and extrapolate it.

"It's 0.2 seconds quicker if you take a hard right across 4 lanes of traffic in rush hour" it thinks, so it takes you off the main road and onto a side street. You are then stuck there for 10 minutes because you can't turn right across 4 lanes of traffic in rush hour.

Re: Organic Maps

#464

Post by sanderjd »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #462
sanderjd wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is actually a really perfect demonstration of why you often shouldn't attribute things to malice which can be explained by incompetence. This is on my mind a lot when I see speculation about why google (or other large organizations) does various things. It's just a bunch of human beings with egos and biases and blind spots and imperfect information. Mistakes are made.

But that is malice. They're specifically fucking over an entire country because they believe that post codes shouldn't be that way. They know otherwise.

No, it isn't. It's ignorance. It's incompetent to be ignorant of something that matters to doing a good job. It's possible to remain ignorant about something despite being told the correct information. (This is the difference between "ignorant" and "unaware".)

Malice requires intent to do wrong, either for some selfish benefit or just to be cruel. That's not what's going on in this story, it's "just" ignorance.

Re: Organic Maps

#465

Post by xcrunner529 »

ihatehn wrote: post #364
chickenWing wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing all the praise in this thread, I downloaded the app, and I must admit I'm disappointed and confused at the effusion, but maybe I'm doing something wrong. I tried a very basic task of getting driving directions to a specific address and that doesn't seem to be supported. For some streets, it will give me directions to the street as a whole, but that's not useful for long streets. Other streets don't seem to exi…

A lot of the effusive praise is from people in Europe, who navigate slightly differently (often directions are based on intersection, etc) and have a lot longer OSM tradition. My guess is that you're American (or at least not European) and so unfortunately the fact is that volunteers like ourselves have to do the work of adding addresses to the map. One easy way anyone can do that is with the RapID / MapWithAI addres…

Yeah I bought a new build in a greenfield community and so it was a fun first project to pull the new street and address data from the county auditor and create the streets and addresses for my community in OSM. I did it the “hard” way with JOSM I guess not knowing about the MapwithAI stuff.

Re: Organic Maps

#466

Post by tnecniv »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #229
rob74 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds a bit American to me honestly - I would think that in Europe (and especially in Amsterdam) there would be enough cyclists to make the data usable. OTOH, they may not have the necessary privacy settings enabled (I think that's a minority among car users too). Of course it's also a vicious circle: if Google Maps is bad for cyclists, few cyclists will be using it, so you won't get the data you need to make i…

How many cyclists use Google Maps to navigate? I guess (with no true facts) most cyclists know their primary routes and when going somewhere new have a rough idea and just check for the last part. Whereas car drivers often use navigation all the time to see traffic and alternatives, which are non-issues for cyclists. Thus even with many cyclists the information they collect is less.

Also mistakes driving a car are more costly. If you miss a turn on a bike, you can stop, walk your bike back, and take it. In a car, if the street is busy, you can’t do that, and who knows where you end up if you take the next exit etc.

Re: Organic Maps

#467

Post by ricardobayes »

ryandrake wrote: post #330
ricardobayes wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's a good initiative, I don't think it works as this kind of throttling almost never simulates a real spotty and crap connection.

More tech companies should do this, and they should do more of it. On Empathy Days, iOS/Android software engineers should have to "live on" 6 year old phones, and desktop software developers should have to use laptops with 8GB RAM and 15" screens as their daily drivers. And Internet throttling should both reduce bandwidth and introduce random latencies and connection drops. Too many developers just assume their users…

Man I feel so called out haha. I use a laptop with 8GB RAM and 15" as my daily. Also have a crap old smartphone.

I think I need to change my ways

Re: Organic Maps

#468

Post by tazjin »

red_admiral wrote: post #368
tazjin wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a thing that increments "number" is probably also "flat", which probably leads to what I understood as "household" in a large building.

"Flat" increments "number" if and only if it has a separate post box. If you have several flats behind the same box in a common front door - a common set-up in the UK when a larger house has been converted into several flats - then as far as the postcode system is concerned, those flats don't exist; since people still write "Flat 3, 11 Wisteria Drive ..." on letters this creates various issues with denormalised addre…

How much influence does a building owner/developer have over this assignment? Can they explicitly request multiple post codes for a building?

Re: Organic Maps

#469

Post by Zmicier42 »

Height profile on the route is one of the most useful features of Organic maps for hiking. Have not seen such functionality in most of other maps apps.

Re: Organic Maps

#470

Post by quercusa »

Great for airline passengers!

I saw this while preparing for the return leg of an airplane trip, so I downloaded the offline maps and was able to follow my flight via GPS - made things much more interesting.

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