this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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I've tried using it over the years but I never liked it because there was no information. So last night I looked at my local city and there is almost no information at all. I spent a few hours last night adding buildings and restaurants and removing incorrect items. It was actually kind of fun and therapeutic and I plan to do more of it tonight. My girlfriend thinks it's dumb and I'm wasting my time because Google maps and Apple maps and Bing maps exists but she just doesn't understand open source.

Edit: Apologies, I just realized this question is not Linux specific.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We update it a lot. We also have a product (for walkers in the British Isles) called WayMaps (used by a variety of walking web sites in the UK and also our own demo site https://waymaps.the-hug.net/) which uses the geodata from OSM and other Open Data to produce our own map tiles. We love OSM.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Started contributing aswell when I saw that my city was really outdated and it's actually really fun to do it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I have added some nearby forest paths to OSM and added some bicycle paths alongside roads which were already mapped, using OSM mostly for outside of road network since other maps do not show forest paths and the like at all while OSM has decent coverage

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I frequently use it and correct any errors I find. In a lot of places OSM can frequently be wrong, but fixing this requires very little effort, just use it and correct any errors you notice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I decided to give it a try over the weekend on a road trip, through the apps Organic Maps and Go Map!! I really liked Go Map!! except that it crashes occasionally, and won't restart until your reinstall it :( loosing all the GPS tracks and unsubmitted data :(( If it was more stable, I'd recommend it to everyone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yes!

I try to navigate everywhere with organic map. If I need to look up a business' coordinates, I use a web container of gmaps I found on f-droid. If I go somewhere and it isn't in open maps, I add it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I occasionally update the POIs in my city and update some paths that occasionally change.

[–] MrMusAddict 1 points 1 year ago

ABRP (ABetterRoutePlanner, the best routing software for EVs) uses OSM. FYI for any EV owners.

I update OSM all the time. Agreed it's super therapeutic!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Back before I felt comfortable taking my expensive smartphones running with me for the GPS purposes, I'd manually enter my running routes into RunKeeper. I don't know if they still use it, but back then their mapping was powered by OpenStreetMap. I'd add in stuff like sidewalks and trails that weren't on the map yet to make my manual entries easier. I liked doing this--it was kind of fun and I felt good contributing my knowledge of my local unimportant suburb to the world.

I've been surprised at how much is already on there, though. Out of curiosity I went to look at the map for my mom's hometown of ~500 people in the middle of nowhere and found it surprisingly complete.

I still like OpenStreetMap, but don't use it as much anymore. I wish there was a navigation app that used OSM data and was able to give me audio cues (e.g. "turn left at the next exit"), because that's 99% of my map use these days. (And if there is one that I don't know about, please let me know!)

[–] tallwookie 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

why doesn't openstreetmaps just scrape google maps for names?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I used OSMAnd for a while before I got a data plan but found it next to useless as it would routinely take nearly an hour (not even joking) to figure out where I was.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

OsmAnd is my family’s go-to app for navigation. I didn’t notice it missing information compared to Google Maps. The opposite really, with several hiking trails or small side-roads not being on Google some years ago. The only issue it has is navigation for more than ~200km at a time. Often, it just times out if you try that. That’s why Google Maps is still installed on some devices.

I haven’t added anything actively. I think I might have enabled an option to send location data to improve the accuracy of the streets or something at some point, but I’m very unsure about that one.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Pokemon Go uses OSM for the map data in the game. I've submitted park trails by tracing them in the satellite view and now the game has all the trails.

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