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Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

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Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#51

Post by untog »

ubercore wrote: post #35
zackola wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rest assured that we will be adding the subway stops and various other awesome related data sets shortly.

Not to sound like a downer, because I really appreciate open source mapping, but that's the part where I think the costs, long term, will swing back. Google maps is deceptively simple, in that the javascript library and tiling is a relatively solved problem. Google has the best datasets, and the best large-data know-how in the business, so outsourcing things like an up-to-date transit location and route database is b…

What if you want to offer transit directions from your location to a rental?

Actually, Google doesn't let you do that either. They have separate licensing agreements with every transit authority, so there is no API access.

You're right on the geocoder, though. The closest I ever found was Yahoo's, but they're still not up to much.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#53

Post by matwood »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #25
eridius wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the problem lies much more with you and your phone than it does with Google Plus as a writing platform. The problem definitely lies with Google Plus as a web app. Whatever they're doing, it's just not a very good experience on a mobile device. Maybe on Android they redirect Google+ pages to their native app, but they don't even offer a way to do that for other platforms even if you have the native app insta…

I don't think a conspiracy is obvious at all. I think this is just a common Google problem; when you hire A+ level talent they don't want to spend their time adjusting css for every platform. That's not an interesting problem to them; self-driving cars is interesting. This is why I think every company should hire B and even a few C+ level talent. Someone has to do the boring details.

You're being down voted, but I wondered something similar in the thread about broke FB and Twitter APIs from the other day.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3444429

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#54

Post by sdelmont »

blhack wrote: post #52

Could somebody explain to me how google charges for maps? I'm using it for http://lanmarks.com/ -- and it's not like I'm throwing an API key at them with the javascript include...

it's tied to the domain name of the page including the maps javascript (that is, the referrer for that JS request)

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#55

Post by freyfogle »

Roboprog wrote: post #27

The take away I got is that Google maps is a very good way to implement a map tile on your pages if you are a startup, one less thing to worry about, but if you succeed, be prepared to "optimize" the cost of that portion later. The per-unit cost is a steep slope, once you start to get volume. Fair enough. No way would I try to make my own map at the beginning of a project.

You don't need to make your own map. MapQuest serves very nice OSM tiles for free. See how we did it using MapQuest here

http://blog.nestoria.co.uk/why-and-how-weve-switched-away-fr...

Then later if you feel like it you can switch to your own tiles

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#56

Post by pilif »

dpcan wrote: post #10
kooshball wrote: post #7

I really wish there is a way to show more than just the domain name next to the title. >Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish (google.com) is simply misleading.

Also not on the topic of the article, but... I wish people would stop blogging on Google plus. Period. It's the worst reading experience ever on the iPhone - nearly impossible as the text blurs, and you have to drag the article around to see it all and then wait for the blur to go away.

The blurring is a bug in Safari that is sometimes (I haven't investigated the exact cause) triggered when you scroll content below an element with position: fixed

In the case of Google+ that's the navigation bar.

Strangely, I could not trigger the issue when I was reading this post on my iPad. Now either Google has figured out the cause and found a workaround or the stars have somehow aligned correctly for it not to happen this time.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#57

Post by alanfalcon »

dpcan wrote: post #10
kooshball wrote: post #7

I really wish there is a way to show more than just the domain name next to the title. >Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish (google.com) is simply misleading.

Also not on the topic of the article, but... I wish people would stop blogging on Google plus. Period. It's the worst reading experience ever on the iPhone - nearly impossible as the text blurs, and you have to drag the article around to see it all and then wait for the blur to go away.

I read the article just fine on my iPhone. But when I view a G+ entry on my computer I get a huge "Suspended" notification because I used a slash in my name when I registered.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#58

Post by cullenking »

blhack wrote: post #52

Could somebody explain to me how google charges for maps? I'm using it for http://lanmarks.com/ -- and it's not like I'm throwing an API key at them with the javascript include...

Start using an API key - you can then use their API console to track your usage, and you'll actually get notifications of overages, impending shutoff etc. Much better than flying blind.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#59

Post by kuahyeow »

It's a very overview of the current open source map technologies out there. People may be talking a lot about the price, but my feeling is that the next batch of map servers etc are catering to a major set of folks who wish to diverge from the stock standard Google Maps look and functionality.

The technology is simplifying the whole process of generating and rendering maps quite a bit - comes with it's trade-offs of course. For those requiring a step or two above a simple basic map yet wish to have more customization over what's in the map tile, it's perfect - processing times are getting less, and the technology is becoming less arcane to understand

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#60

Post by cullenking »

soc88 wrote: post #40
ubercore wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sound like a downer, because I really appreciate open source mapping, but that's the part where I think the costs, long term, will swing back. Google maps is deceptively simple, in that the javascript library and tiling is a relatively solved problem. Google has the best datasets, and the best large-data know-how in the business, so outsourcing things like an up-to-date transit location and route database is b…

I wonder in which part of the world you are living. OSM has in most parts of the world outpaced even the best, commercial map providers...

Yes, but the data can be pretty bad, and software to access that data could use some improvement. For geocoding, there is only Nominatim which is a major PITA to get setup. I am still trying to get a full planet import and it has been 30 days on an 8 core 16gb machine with 6 drives in RAID10. Without 64gb of ram and some SSD's, it's going to take a month. Additionally, the results can really really suck. For example, zipcodes are often returned as "97006:97015", a range, rather than as a point. On top of that, sometimes you get the range delimited by a semicolon rather than a colon, etc. The price you pay for user inputted data - there's lots of it, but it's not all quality. Still though, better than paying an arm and a leg!
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