FW: [Dewayne-Net] The New Cartographers: Why OpenStreetMap Worries Tech Companies

[michael gurstein]

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Dewayne Hendricks
Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2012 8:22 PM
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The New Cartographers: Why OpenStreetMap Worries Tech
Companies

The New Cartographers: Why OpenStreetMap Worries Tech Companies By CARL
FRANZEN OCTOBER 20, 2012
<http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/openstreetmap-part-2-new-carto
graphers.php>

Nevermind Apple's maps misfire, the free, volunteer-made OpenStreetMap may
end up reigning supreme anyway, as companies increasingly choose it for map
data over Google. But as the project grows, it's becoming harder and harder
for its members to agree on what direction to go in next. Part 2 of a 3-part
series. Read part 1 here.

"There is literally not a mapping company in the world that doesn't use
OpenStreetMap in some capacity," Steve Coast, founder of the free,
crowdsourced world map, in his keynote address to some 224 passionate
geography junkies at the second annual State of the Map USA conference in
Portland, Oregon, on October 13.

Already, in the last year alone, some of the biggest names in the tech
sector have switched from Google Maps - which began charging for heavy use
of its data in January 2012 - to OpenStreetMap (OSM) to power their map apps
or websites.

The growing list of names now includes Foursquare, Wikipedia and
Apple(though there's some debate over just how much OpenStreetMap data Apple
uses in its glitchy maps, as it also lists TomTom as a provider). Craigslist
also chose to OSM for its own new built-in maps views, but never used Google
to begin with.

During his keynote address at the conference, Coast went on to say that he's
been approached "all the time" by other big tech companies interested in
using OpenStreetMap's trove of data for their own for-profit, proprietary
products and services, but that they didn't want to be publicly outed for
fear of bungling the adoption.

And yet, according to Coast, the companies came to him for information on
how other firms, potentially competitors, were using OpenStreetMap. Which is
why Coast announced that in 2013, he's organizing a conference strictly for
OpenStreetMap's commercial users.

During his talk, Coast also showed the following rap video that contrasts
the theories of celebrated economists Frederick Hayek and John Maynard
Keynes in an effort to illustrate the push and pull between "top down" and
"bottom up" direction that OSM maintains:

[snip]

Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>

 

[john whelan]

In Canada we have both CANVEC data and other Open Data sources some of which OpenStreetMap doesn't accept so there are now one or two alternatives such as FOSM.org that use OpenStreetMap formats and tools but include other data sources.

There is some internal OSM debate certainly in France at the moment about which open data can be included in OSM.

Cheerio John

On 21 October 2012 00:38, michael gurstein <[hidden email]> wrote:

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Dewayne Hendricks
Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2012 8:22 PM
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The New Cartographers: Why OpenStreetMap Worries Tech
Companies

The New Cartographers: Why OpenStreetMap Worries Tech Companies By CARL
FRANZEN OCTOBER 20, 2012
<<a href="http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/openstreetmap-part-2-new-carto graphers.php" target="_blank">http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/openstreetmap-part-2-new-carto
graphers.php>

Nevermind Apple's maps misfire, the free, volunteer-made OpenStreetMap may
end up reigning supreme anyway, as companies increasingly choose it for map
data over Google. But as the project grows, it's becoming harder and harder
for its members to agree on what direction to go in next. Part 2 of a 3-part
series. Read part 1 here.

"There is literally not a mapping company in the world that doesn't use
OpenStreetMap in some capacity," Steve Coast, founder of the free,
crowdsourced world map, in his keynote address to some 224 passionate
geography junkies at the second annual State of the Map USA conference in
Portland, Oregon, on October 13.

Already, in the last year alone, some of the biggest names in the tech
sector have switched from Google Maps - which began charging for heavy use
of its data in January 2012 - to OpenStreetMap (OSM) to power their map apps
or websites.

The growing list of names now includes Foursquare, Wikipedia and
Apple(though there's some debate over just how much OpenStreetMap data Apple
uses in its glitchy maps, as it also lists TomTom as a provider). Craigslist
also chose to OSM for its own new built-in maps views, but never used Google
to begin with.

During his keynote address at the conference, Coast went on to say that he's
been approached "all the time" by other big tech companies interested in
using OpenStreetMap's trove of data for their own for-profit, proprietary
products and services, but that they didn't want to be publicly outed for
fear of bungling the adoption.

And yet, according to Coast, the companies came to him for information on
how other firms, potentially competitors, were using OpenStreetMap. Which is
why Coast announced that in 2013, he's organizing a conference strictly for
OpenStreetMap's commercial users.

During his talk, Coast also showed the following rap video that contrasts
the theories of celebrated economists Frederick Hayek and John Maynard
Keynes in an effort to illustrate the push and pull between "top down" and
"bottom up" direction that OSM maintains:

[snip]

Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>



_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss