In 2023 Organic Maps got its first million users
In 2023 Organic Maps got its first million users
It's a really great app!
I have consistantly wanted to move to openstreetmaps over something like waze but I am continually dissapointed that it cannt find basic stteet addresses. If I search the address I want, all it finds is the street name. Dissapointing.
I mean, that was the same with paper maps only a couple decades ago. Buildings are supposed to have prominent street numbers for a reason.
Also, anyone can contribute! I find the app "StreetComplete" to be really helpful for seeing what needs to be added whereever I go.
I agree that paper maps were the same, but we are obviously beyond that now. I am thinking that I am going to start contributing, eventually most of my local addresses and stores I commonly visit will be built up!
StreetComplete is actually heaps of fun. Pic4Review is another great one for contributing.
I understand your POV, but OSM has proven to be useful for me very often. For other stuff like GPS maps for driving, I use something else, but even that solution is far from flawless
For things that are missing, you can contribute the changes
I agree and it's one of the biggest places where OSM is completely outclassed.
I hope OSM reaches a point where house number datasets are imported on a large scale, even if only for major cities. Adding numbers by hand is possible but very tedious, and unlike most mapping done for OSM you can't just go off of what sat imagery shows.
15 or so years ago I did a rough and dirty implementation of approximate addresses using the idea of just dividing street segments up by the address numbers on them and going from there. For instance, in the Canadian Road Network Files, they provide smallish segments of streets that usually line up to things like cross streets in metro areas, and they come with the ranges of the street numbers in the metadata, so you’d get something like a starting value of say 200 and and an ending value of 212 for a section of, say, Yonge St, and you could just divide that segment up across those values directly. You’d generally get within a few metres of the correct address. Close enough at the time for our use cases, at least. For more rural areas it didn’t work out so well, but for metro areas it was actually pretty decent. This could all be done via a single Postgres/PostGIS query with the right inputs and address parsing in front of it.
It wasn’t perfect and later came various APIs and whatnot for doing this sort of stuff, but it was pretty decent for such a relatively simple implementation.
I’ve been trying to use openstreetmaps more recently. When I come across the same issue as you, I add that address/building/shop so that it can get updated into Magic Earth (my personal favourite at the moment)
There are two primary issues with Organic Maps that I keep running into:
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No live traffic. This will probably be the case with any fully FOSS solution, as there isn't currently a good way to gather that kind of data that respects privacy and also has enough recent data to be useful. (Not a deal breaker for me though.)
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No alternate routes. This is a much bigger issue for me and keeps me largely on Magic Earth (OSM data but closed source app.) There are cases where there are multiple routes to a destination that are equal in time. Magic Earth will identify those and let me pick between them before it starts routing.
This is a super useful feature and I hope it comes to Organic Maps at some point.
Otherwise, really nice app and I enjoy using it for routes that I'm not really in a rush to get to or that are otherwise familiar.
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Meanwhile there is an update waiting in the playstore but I don't want to because it says the following in the changelog. Why is it so hard to keep it simple? I don't want to read reviews in a NAVIGATION app ffs.
Don’t worry. There's no reviews or any stupid shit in the app. There’s only a single link in the hotel's description page to an external website to see reviews and booking. It’s quite simple and unobtrusive IMO. If you don’t want to see that shit, simply don’t open that link
It's just a link. The app does not show any reviews. Still a bad sign in my opinion, but pretty acceptable for now.
Thanks for sharing this; it's an anti-feature in my opinion. Consider adding your feedback on Github RE the Kayak integration / Ads.
It's not just a navigation app, it's a map. It's showing different things that are located on the places shown on the maps. I want to see places I can go and reviews
Getting close to my recommendation. I need to test it out and see if it is worth using over OSMAnd+.
I tried both and they both have their ups are downs. Some examples
Osmand+ is really slow with map tile displaying and doesn't make the experience smooth for me. Osmand has many more features. The maps are also a bit too chaotic imo, because all POIs get displayed together.
OM is much smoother in experience but the maps only get updated once a month. It's extra disappointing for me because I only see my changes live after a month.
I use OM dominantly, but I also keep the other one installed in case the first lacks something
Organic Maps does almost everything better than OsmAnd, but it also has a much smaller feature set. I have both on my phone.
I use maps for public transport maybe and I’ve never had much luck with OM on that front unfortunately. I don’t know how well it performs in other areas though
What are they anyway?
A openstreetmap application
Damn
That's cool but why are they registered in Estonia
It's maybe because Estonia has the best digital system for digital residents and companies. It's so easy to manage compared to other countries' alternatives
While the current maps.me devs are in Cyprus, which is technically one of the fronts for most Russian companies serving international customers.
Because Estonia had a visionary government and high digital literacy