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Google Apps are like junk food, bad for your health/privacy, but very good in taste/product otherwise.
(self.showerthoughts)
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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I actually think OpenStreetMaps have much more content. In my town Google shows roads and houses. OSM shows me everything down to fences, entrances, beach boardwalks, positions of every single trailer in our nearby tourist housing and more. This is critical when you're a delivery guy and you need to know where the entrance to the gated facility is. I used Waze to drive, and then OSM Viewer to walk. Even when you zoom in on an empty spot in Google, OSM shows type of land, elevation, where the trees are if there are any, who is the owner of the land if it's owned by a company. I also like that it shows what factories are called and their land border, instead of just unnamed boxes. Worked for me both in Ukraine and in Ireland.
Is Open Street Maps app called OsmAnd?
Yes that's one of the apps. There are others that I can't think of off the top of my head at the moment.
Organic Maps is another OSM GPS app, maybe it's the one you're thinking of?
Organic Maps is OSM-based? I switched to it for a few months for the reasons stated above, but it really did not work out for me. Mainly because it was lacking a lot of major locations and facilities in my city, and I could never reliably ask for indications. Plus it had no info on public transportation other than the subway, which was unfortunate. I guess it was because I'm in Europe? Either way I eventually had to switch back to GMaps 😔
Yeah, it is (website). OSM relies on the community and it's very common stuff is missing. I've started editing there exactly 2 weeks and added a lot of POIs on my city.
If you wanna have a headstart in contributing to OSM, you can check out their wiki or you could use a app like StreetComplete that brings some gamifying aspects by sending out quests.