If you're fascinated by maps and digital cartography and haven't done so yet, do check out OpenStreetMap! It's competitive to Bing, HERE, etc. but everything is open, and the data is yours to play with.
There are projects based on OSM for routing, geo search, map editing, etc. that are also free. Definitely a lot of room for both programmers and non-programmers to contribute.
Also, OSM allowed the amazing initiative of http://hotosm.org/ to be built -- a website where contributors from around the world help humanitarian organizations by adding data into OSM for various areas where people are in grave need (e.g. finding houses of people in drought areas in Africa) based on satellite & aerial imagery. I tried this, and really couldn't walk away much too far into the night, can get addicting... also I think it's something similar to analyzing photos from spy satellites during WWII, only for 100% good case! For more details, see:
"From the beginning of OpenStreetMap it was anticipated that open, free map data would be a tremendous benefit for humanitarian aid and economic development. The idea was proved during the Haiti earthquake in 2010. HOT was incorporated in the immediate aftermath, August 2010, as a U.S. nonprofit and became a registered 501(c)3 charitable organization in 2013. Anyone is welcome to contribute to the HOT mission via our Tasking Manager - all you need is an OpenStreetMap Username. We ask only that you try to uphold the same code of conduct as our members, see our HOT Membership Code."
Surprisingly for me, quite many important buildings can be discovered without local knowledge (i.e. without "being there physically"), purely based on aerial imagery and a specially crafted guide. See e.g. the following link, with some hints and clues on how to recognize a school for a current (urgent!) pre-typhoon task http://tasks.hotosm.org/project/804:
I can second that.
https://www.mapbox.com is a particularly notable technology on top of OSM.
Initially I wanted to use Google maps with some customs styles but found their styling options pretty limited. Even worse it's too unreliable in China and there's no way around it. I used mapbox to easily create a nice map that incorporated our branding and then http://leafletjs.com/ to add interactivity on top of it. Very happy with it.
I'm curious if you would know how to do this. I'm in the states and I would like to improve my local maps. I'm a complete newb to mapping and OSM. What I'd like to know is, what's the best way to link addresses and coordinates? Are there public databases? There are new office building and subdivisions that are not yet in OSM and I'd like to help do that. I just don't have time to enter all of them manually, so if there's a way to automate that...
> Definitely a lot of room for both programmers and non-programmers to contribute.
As an engineer-developer hybrid, I found OSM mightily helpful when pulling midwest town data and running tornado strike simulations. I encourage contributors to look beyond the roads -- other infrastructure such as power lines or towers are rare to find in the data but can be extremely useful.
Do you know if OSM is any good at geocoding for US addresses? We're currently using Google, but we're often bumping into the 2,500/day ceiling, and the commercial license is $10k/year.
We have looked at some alternatives such as geocod.io, but quality seems a bit lacking and they don't offer some features we need (but which we would surely be able to develop ourselves if we could use OSM as a primary database).
I've had a great experience with Apple Maps, which are based in part on Open Street Map (giving data back too) and TomTom. I've found it's accurate enough to just trust it, and it's excellent at detecting and rerouting when I can't do what it wanted me to (eg: traffic in the way, or I just miss the turn.)
This is a very detailed article. Most people do not appreciate how much work is put into building these digital maps, so it is great to see these kinds of articles.
While not as detailed, for contrast I want to post how Nokia's HERE maps builds their maps.
That is from the company blog. It shows a couple of our tools, but not nearly all. I work for HERE maps and my opinion is my own.
I just thought that people might be interested in how other companies like HERE build maps. Despite all the automation (at both google and HERE), it is still a human intensive process and there are people on the other end making it as correct as can be. Also, I can't go beyond what is written on the public blog as I am not a company spokesperson.
I can't imagine the amount of ambiguity that comes up in every day conversation when the name of your project/division is "here". Do you have internal language that's used to avoid such ambiguity?
Google Map's data keeps getting better and better, they now have lane warnings (e.g. "right two lanes," etc) and traffic warnings with the offering to re-route (if they can find a quicker route). Although Google Map constantly offering to re-route me onto a slower route is a little odd (e.g. "want to re-route? It will be a 5 minute longer trip!").
That all being said, while Google Maps as a data source is amazing, Google Maps as an app and or web-site has a lot to be desired. Up until a few versions ago they had a way to add "My Places" but no way to actually access those places from the app (what?!). They have no search history (still, today), they do have suggestions but they are just somewhat useful, they have no compass (got removed), plus they went all "minimalist" and hide all the UI elements (and removed things like offline maps, for nearly a year).
I've actually been forced to stop using Google Maps as GPS as the app keeps closing during navigation and when re-opened it has "forgotten" what I was navigating to or previously searched for. So now I am forced, mid-journey to exit the freeway just to re-open Google Maps, re-search for my destination, and then re-start navigation just hoping it won't re-close-randomly before I get there...
It doesn't crash. It just closes. It is just gone. Like "poof." Then of course the phone goes into standby as nothing is keeping the screen on. At least if it had search history the situation MIGHT be recoverable, but nope...
I worked as a contractor in Kirkland on this project for about a year.
Just for context, the first image with the red and green dots--- each dot represents a 360-degree "street view" image. While consumers only get half-a-dozen a block, the operators got access to all of them. (Green are HD, red are normal def.) It was really useful for verifying that businesses had closed because the streetview dots also had the exact time that they were taken.
There was also deeplinking in Atlas to a specific dot and direction vector. So when I was submitting a change to a business, I could link to the exact sign that I saw to prove that "Mama's Teriyaki is on _that_ corner", which helped whoever QA'd my change.
It was a great first job out of college given that my degree wasn't very relevant to anything. (A lot of my coworkers in the same spot--- young, a degree that wasn't too useful, trying to find anything to do.) Out of the 400 contractors in that first Kirkland "class", I see tons of them around the Seattle tech industry now. It's been a surprisingly good network to have.
At the end of the day it was still data-entry / data-validation, and mind-numbingly boring.
This is actually very fascinating. About how many businesses a day would an average person versus a prolific or slow person manage to update? Did you mostly work off of business signs to determine information about businesses? What if no recent pictures had been taken?
Can you use the Atlas tool to correct business and other E/POIs (establishment/points of interest), or is limited to roads and other base map data? How do they evaluate spam POIs (say, locksmiths, who are prolific on Maps) in comparison to other Maps RAP (Report a problems)? Do all the teams (Places Listing Editors, Map Maker Google Reviewers, Maps Editors, etc.) use the same Atlas tool, or do they all have different tools? I use MM (Map Maker) quite a bit, and I'm curious how Google's tools work in comparison. Thanks.
Economic competition implies massive waste of effort. Not sharing work and ideas is one of them; others include the psychological/sociological effects of competition and pressure, and also all the resources poured into advertising (which itself does not particularly give us better products/services).
This isn't unique to Google Maps; the same goes for competing pharmaceutical companies, educational institutions, and everything else. Imagine if they were all cooperating rather than competing.
However there are also some benefits to competition. Notably, the impetus to take risks of private capital in order to build new things / try new ventures. Also, the presence of choice in the market (in this case, you can choose which maps you consider more reliable).
I'd love to see more exploration into economic systems involving cooperation and choice, instead of competition. Can we have independent organizations motivated to produce different-but-similar goods, while simultaneously sharing their efforts?
Can't understand the reasoning behind expecting a company to pour hundreds of millions of dollars and resources into something for free / no return at all.
Its been said that Maps is likely Google's most expensive product to maintain. Just think about the scope of driving every road in the world as often as possible.
It will only be replaced by OSM if OSM gets to be better than Maps on its own.
What Google has is massive amounts of raw data. The street information may be time consuming but is still trivial from a mapping point of view, and is often done better elsewhere. But StreetView has amazing potential and is inaccessible for analysis outside of Google. APIs are great but we need raw data!
In the pre-Ground Truth days, Google Maps in SF used to think you could take a right from northeastboound Market street onto the 101 onramp, which is both obviously the best route for a wide variety of routes and also not actually allowed. The combination meant that many route plans didn't work.
In looking into getting it fixed I heard that the contract for getting the map data prevented Google from making any modifications to the map data. Apple Maps might be in a similar situation -- aware of the problem but with their hands tied. Map data has a lot of legal restrictions for reasons I don't really get.
I think Apple gets the short end of the stick in these deals. The company that provides that mapping data usually has ridiculous restrictions on what you can/can't do to the data (even possibly disallowing your own patches), and Apple takes all the heat from users.
They started Ground Truth when I was there and it really opened my eyes to just how "broken" a lot of map data sources were at the time. Something I considered to be a 'solved' problem (take aerial photograph, pull out streets, poof map!) was no where close to solved.
Some folks have said that Ingress, the Android and now iOS, real world geo game. Was in part an exercise in data collecting. Get people to photograph land marks in the real world to make "portals" while collecting GPS data associated with public landmarks for maps. And then use that data to localize things in satellite imagery, etc.
It's little wonder that Google Maps is such an amazing application given all the time, intelligence, resources and just the sheer commitment Google's shown to it.
I know business considerations are what they are and often independent from others, but nothing shook my belief in Apple's commitment to quality as a defining principle more than the decision to replace Google Maps with Apple's own half-baked beta offering. Does anyone think they'll ever give maps & cartography the kind of attention to detail that Google's given it?
I think most interesting point is not covered in either of them: How much of this effort devoted towards human curation? The numbers are believed to be ~1100 full time employees and 6000 contract workers[1]. These are huge numbers compared to most competitors in the market. Assuming each correction to a map can take 15 mins on average, you can easily make 100,000 corrections a day. Again, assuming there are top 2000 cities in the world where most of the queries originates, this is about 100 corrections per city per day. This would guarantee Google maps best of the best freshness, precision and recall on most metrics. With about 10X-20X larger curation force plus algo engineering, likes of Apple or HERE have no chance. In a way this also shows Google's leadership wisdom. Maps are the most important thing on mobile and even on web. Most companies don't get this and provide minuscule budgets citing no potential revenues (for instance Ballmer cancelled Street View like effort at Microsoft). By the time they wake - if they wake up - it would be to only find that they have been outrun by such a huge gap that even a decade won't be enough to catch up.
difficult to imagine why apple would have even attempted to get into this space ... they must realize they can only be a second rate player. maybe that's good enough for them? doesn't fit with their story/ethos though
St. Louis streetwalker serial killer, Maury Travis, sent the local newspaper a computer generated map giving the intersection where he left a body.
Investigators determined that web-based mapping software Expedia was used--based on symbols used to mark highways and such--ruling out Mapquest, Yahoo, and others.
A single person had clicked on that intersection in Expedia in the 5 days before the map was received by the newspaper. They traced the person presumably using the IP address.
This was back in 2001.
It's odd that we still have unsolved street crime given that everyone today carries a tracking device sending back real-time geolocation data.
It's incredible how Google can get so many people to work for them for no pay. Would you similarly contribute to closed-source proprietary software if given the opportunity?
Google Maps still does poorly in small towns, as far as I've seen. Not that you can really expect any better. The data in my hometown has clearly never been ground-checked (or even sanity checked by a remote employee), it's all clearly culled from webcrawelers and corrections by locals. There are businesses marked that haven't existed in a decade or more, and businesses that have existed for a decade aren't on the map. Yet another good reason to have a decent website as a small business I guess, when it's potentially the primary source of data for mapping/"local" services.
Google maps is amazing. I was on my way to Detroit Airport, I live about 1.5hours away. Anyways, I wanted to double check directions so I used google maps, and it came up with directions that were going to take me 2 hours. I laughed thinking, 'oh technology, 2 steps forward, 1 step back'. So I drove down the way I already knew and was just double checking. With twenty minutes left in the drive, theres a deadstop traffic jam. Highway is closed. Turns out entire highways flooded in Detroit around 6-7am, and when I googled directions around 830am, google knew not to go that way, but I didn't. Made it to the airport 3 hours later, with a flight 6 hours after that. I had never been so impressed with google maps before this though. How did it know not to go that way so fast? I literally just drove right into it no warning or detour signs.
And yet, when I want to go from SFO to Cupertino, it absolutely refuses to offer taking 380 to 280, even when it is 10 to 15 minutes faster according to Google itself.
Apparently they still haven't fixed the whole "we have to go directly away from the destination for a little while" problem.
> The majority of buildings in the U.S. are now on Google Maps.
I doubt this. Out of curiosity I looked at my family's farm and Google Maps is missing most of our outbuildings. More generally I'm sure that they come up short on backyard sheds, pool buildings, structures in dense forests, etc.
Where do you think the majority of buildings are? I mean, there's a long tail, but more than 80% of the US population lives in urban environments; the head of that density graph is massive.
As a point of fact, most buildings do not exist where there are currently such things as trees, pools, and sheds... Most people, it would seem, tend to live in houses and complexes, work in factories and offices, or shop at stores and shopping centers.
An interesting anecdote: the "promenade claude lévi-strauss" is a new street in Paris (around 1 year old, pedestrian only). It doesn't exist in Google Maps yet, which make Uber fail when you try to go there as Uber rely on google maps.
(many people might want to go there, as it is now where all the paris urban planning administration is. I had to for a permit.)
Actually last I tried Uber/Google Maps sent you at the directly opposite corner of Paris, to the Quai Branly Museum, probably because there is something related to the anthropologist there (?).
Both Apple Maps and more interestingly the crowd sourced OpenStreetMap know about the "promenade".
I'm curious to see how long it will take Google to discover this new street.
After relying on Google Maps a lot for many years living in the US, I have (maybe unsurprisingly) noticed that it doesn't work nearly as well in Europe. As in, I'd zoom in on central Stockholm and search for something common, like the name of a restaurant, and Maps would promptly swoosh me to Nicaragua where it found a place with that name. It's doing stuff like this so often that I rarely use it anymore.
This article shows that Waze's method of crowd sourcing maps is the right way to go. Waze is able to have realtime detailed information about every street, building, directions, etc. including all the details that were discussed in the article + much more (e.g. future road changes), and most importantly it does that in a fraction of the cost.
Now it seems that the 1.3B that Google paid for it is probably a bargain
Despite all of Google' effort, they still rely too much on USGS published maps. For example, just 6 miles from the GooglePlex is a road in Newark with a gate [1], but Google doesn't know you can't drive on it.
They're doing a good thing, but unless you can see that Google has driven the route and has published street view, you can't entirely trust them.
[+] [-] erjiang|11 years ago|reply
There are projects based on OSM for routing, geo search, map editing, etc. that are also free. Definitely a lot of room for both programmers and non-programmers to contribute.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Main_Page
[+] [-] akavel|11 years ago|reply
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team
Quoting from the wiki page:
"From the beginning of OpenStreetMap it was anticipated that open, free map data would be a tremendous benefit for humanitarian aid and economic development. The idea was proved during the Haiti earthquake in 2010. HOT was incorporated in the immediate aftermath, August 2010, as a U.S. nonprofit and became a registered 501(c)3 charitable organization in 2013. Anyone is welcome to contribute to the HOT mission via our Tasking Manager - all you need is an OpenStreetMap Username. We ask only that you try to uphold the same code of conduct as our members, see our HOT Membership Code."
Surprisingly for me, quite many important buildings can be discovered without local knowledge (i.e. without "being there physically"), purely based on aerial imagery and a specially crafted guide. See e.g. the following link, with some hints and clues on how to recognize a school for a current (urgent!) pre-typhoon task http://tasks.hotosm.org/project/804:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Typ...
[+] [-] auganov|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cjslep|11 years ago|reply
As an engineer-developer hybrid, I found OSM mightily helpful when pulling midwest town data and running tornado strike simulations. I encourage contributors to look beyond the roads -- other infrastructure such as power lines or towers are rare to find in the data but can be extremely useful.
[+] [-] lobster_johnson|11 years ago|reply
We have looked at some alternatives such as geocod.io, but quality seems a bit lacking and they don't offer some features we need (but which we would surely be able to develop ourselves if we could use OSM as a primary database).
[+] [-] MCRed|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mempko|11 years ago|reply
While not as detailed, for contrast I want to post how Nokia's HERE maps builds their maps.
http://360.here.com/2014/11/17/made-usa-people-fargo-make-ma...
That is from the company blog. It shows a couple of our tools, but not nearly all. I work for HERE maps and my opinion is my own.
I just thought that people might be interested in how other companies like HERE build maps. Despite all the automation (at both google and HERE), it is still a human intensive process and there are people on the other end making it as correct as can be. Also, I can't go beyond what is written on the public blog as I am not a company spokesperson.
[+] [-] fs111|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bostonpete|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xwintermutex|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Someone1234|11 years ago|reply
That all being said, while Google Maps as a data source is amazing, Google Maps as an app and or web-site has a lot to be desired. Up until a few versions ago they had a way to add "My Places" but no way to actually access those places from the app (what?!). They have no search history (still, today), they do have suggestions but they are just somewhat useful, they have no compass (got removed), plus they went all "minimalist" and hide all the UI elements (and removed things like offline maps, for nearly a year).
I've actually been forced to stop using Google Maps as GPS as the app keeps closing during navigation and when re-opened it has "forgotten" what I was navigating to or previously searched for. So now I am forced, mid-journey to exit the freeway just to re-open Google Maps, re-search for my destination, and then re-start navigation just hoping it won't re-close-randomly before I get there...
It doesn't crash. It just closes. It is just gone. Like "poof." Then of course the phone goes into standby as nothing is keeping the screen on. At least if it had search history the situation MIGHT be recoverable, but nope...
[+] [-] civilian|11 years ago|reply
Just for context, the first image with the red and green dots--- each dot represents a 360-degree "street view" image. While consumers only get half-a-dozen a block, the operators got access to all of them. (Green are HD, red are normal def.) It was really useful for verifying that businesses had closed because the streetview dots also had the exact time that they were taken.
There was also deeplinking in Atlas to a specific dot and direction vector. So when I was submitting a change to a business, I could link to the exact sign that I saw to prove that "Mama's Teriyaki is on _that_ corner", which helped whoever QA'd my change.
It was a great first job out of college given that my degree wasn't very relevant to anything. (A lot of my coworkers in the same spot--- young, a degree that wasn't too useful, trying to find anything to do.) Out of the 400 contractors in that first Kirkland "class", I see tons of them around the Seattle tech industry now. It's been a surprisingly good network to have.
At the end of the day it was still data-entry / data-validation, and mind-numbingly boring.
[+] [-] ghshephard|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blissfulight|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] username223|11 years ago|reply
You survived the place hope goes to die? Congrats! It sounds like an unholy amalgam of data entry and a call center.
[+] [-] paulrademacher|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|11 years ago|reply
Imagine a world where all the effort Google, Apple, Microsoft and Nokia put into their maps all went into OpenStreetMap instead.
[+] [-] nfoz|11 years ago|reply
This isn't unique to Google Maps; the same goes for competing pharmaceutical companies, educational institutions, and everything else. Imagine if they were all cooperating rather than competing.
However there are also some benefits to competition. Notably, the impetus to take risks of private capital in order to build new things / try new ventures. Also, the presence of choice in the market (in this case, you can choose which maps you consider more reliable).
I'd love to see more exploration into economic systems involving cooperation and choice, instead of competition. Can we have independent organizations motivated to produce different-but-similar goods, while simultaneously sharing their efforts?
[+] [-] cylinder|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkh80|11 years ago|reply
Its been said that Maps is likely Google's most expensive product to maintain. Just think about the scope of driving every road in the world as often as possible.
It will only be replaced by OSM if OSM gets to be better than Maps on its own.
[+] [-] 7952|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koenigdavidmj|11 years ago|reply
1. That Broad St no longer exists for a significant portion of its length.
2. That Mercer St has been two-way for months now.
This is the major east-west road in that area, and they can't even get that right.
Yes, I've reported it regularly for months now.
[+] [-] evmar|11 years ago|reply
In looking into getting it fixed I heard that the contract for getting the map data prevented Google from making any modifications to the map data. Apple Maps might be in a similar situation -- aware of the problem but with their hands tied. Map data has a lot of legal restrictions for reasons I don't really get.
[+] [-] astrange|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] serve_yay|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beering|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|11 years ago|reply
Some folks have said that Ingress, the Android and now iOS, real world geo game. Was in part an exercise in data collecting. Get people to photograph land marks in the real world to make "portals" while collecting GPS data associated with public landmarks for maps. And then use that data to localize things in satellite imagery, etc.
Makes for an interesting data set.
[+] [-] spinchange|11 years ago|reply
I know business considerations are what they are and often independent from others, but nothing shook my belief in Apple's commitment to quality as a defining principle more than the decision to replace Google Maps with Apple's own half-baked beta offering. Does anyone think they'll ever give maps & cartography the kind of attention to detail that Google's given it?
[+] [-] sytelus|11 years ago|reply
How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-go...
I think most interesting point is not covered in either of them: How much of this effort devoted towards human curation? The numbers are believed to be ~1100 full time employees and 6000 contract workers[1]. These are huge numbers compared to most competitors in the market. Assuming each correction to a map can take 15 mins on average, you can easily make 100,000 corrections a day. Again, assuming there are top 2000 cities in the world where most of the queries originates, this is about 100 corrections per city per day. This would guarantee Google maps best of the best freshness, precision and recall on most metrics. With about 10X-20X larger curation force plus algo engineering, likes of Apple or HERE have no chance. In a way this also shows Google's leadership wisdom. Maps are the most important thing on mobile and even on web. Most companies don't get this and provide minuscule budgets citing no potential revenues (for instance Ballmer cancelled Street View like effort at Microsoft). By the time they wake - if they wake up - it would be to only find that they have been outrun by such a huge gap that even a decade won't be enough to catch up.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/to-do-what-google-does-in-map...
[+] [-] plg|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephenr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shutupalready|11 years ago|reply
Investigators determined that web-based mapping software Expedia was used--based on symbols used to mark highways and such--ruling out Mapquest, Yahoo, and others.
A single person had clicked on that intersection in Expedia in the 5 days before the map was received by the newspaper. They traced the person presumably using the IP address.
This was back in 2001.
It's odd that we still have unsolved street crime given that everyone today carries a tracking device sending back real-time geolocation data.
[+] [-] efalcao|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calinet6|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beering|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rickdale|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhousel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|11 years ago|reply
Apparently they still haven't fixed the whole "we have to go directly away from the destination for a little while" problem.
[+] [-] matt_kantor|11 years ago|reply
I doubt this. Out of curiosity I looked at my family's farm and Google Maps is missing most of our outbuildings. More generally I'm sure that they come up short on backyard sheds, pool buildings, structures in dense forests, etc.
[+] [-] jameshart|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Retra|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juliendorra|11 years ago|reply
Actually last I tried Uber/Google Maps sent you at the directly opposite corner of Paris, to the Quai Branly Museum, probably because there is something related to the anthropologist there (?).
Both Apple Maps and more interestingly the crowd sourced OpenStreetMap know about the "promenade". I'm curious to see how long it will take Google to discover this new street.
[+] [-] rmc|11 years ago|reply
Not too suprising really. OSM can be updated in a minute to add new features.
[+] [-] magicalist|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lingoberry|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amoshag|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cjensen|11 years ago|reply
They're doing a good thing, but unless you can see that Google has driven the route and has published street view, you can't entirely trust them.
[1] 37.515696 -122.050873