[TYPO3-english] inspiring people to share your location

[Andreas Becker]

Hi Bernd
On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 12:53 AM, bernd wilke <x00nsji02 at sneakemail.com>wrote:

> Am Sun, 28 Jun 2009 08:01:57 +0700 schrieb Andreas Becker:
>
> [...]
> > Open Street Map is much to abstract for our region to locate offices and
> > people and therefore we don't use it either here! - Try to find the
> > locations I posted on our google map in Open Street Map - they are
> > simply not there as also here our road is missing - it is only visible
> > in satellite view!
>
> As you are such a big supporter of open source: why don't you support OSM
> and insert your streets in OSM?


Very easy to answer, as we would need to insert all other streets and much
more here in South East Asia! As I wrote it is NOT ONLY me who has this
problem. It is more or less a general problem in our region here! The other
thing is that it doesn't make really sense to reinvent wheels. Google Maps
are used also by most of our customers.

Another point I already wrote about in 1989 in my Thesis is the Map in our
Head (Mind). People in our region, especially in our rural regions orient on
things you can't find on a map, but which you can find on a satellite
picture. It is much easier for them to remember things when they have a look
to a satellite picture than to a map.

i.e. in Thailand we orient oft on 7/11 or on gasoline stations but not on
road names. We have a look to small forests or shop-houses after which you
need to turn somewhere to the right or left. There are dirt roads leading to
other normal roads which you need to take as a part of the road is missing
or you need to cross a bridge over a small creek which are often build
already in the middle of the jungle but the connecting roads are still dirt
roads.

On a satellite picture you can figure this out very easy, especially in the
combined view of Map and Satellite Picture. Also the Terrain view often
helps. All of this isn't existing in OSM and as the name already says it is
a "STREET" Map - but we often have NO STREETS! Perhaps you should come here
and have a look by yourself to understand what our situation is in South
East Asia or also in Africa or even India, where we have lots and lots of
OpenSource Developers - but have a look to OSM - can you find them - NO!


> > Simply check it out (Satellite and Map or Terrain View) and you will see
> > the difference! Open Street Map might work nice in Locations like
> > Germany or US but not here! Even Goggle street Map isn't working and
> > often also Geolocation isn't working properly!
>
> I have seen some regions of the world where OSM has better street-
> information than google. As OSM is open: it's up to you to get better maps


Please show me an example in a third world country or here in South East
Asia and we will check it out and perhaps can learn out of it! We are not a
big city where you get much more information from OSM.

Not because something is called OpenSource or OPEN it needs to be better
than another FREE Solution like Google Maps. Instead of doubling the
workload and constructing nothing more than a doublicate of an already free
solution it would be much better to construct a OSM layer you could place on
Top of a Google Map with really special information you can't find in a
google Map. We have one company here in Phuket which is doing exactly this.
They construct layers which can be used on Google Maps and charge customers
for it! Also a friend in Australia is doing something similar for bigger
companies and News Agencies which want to map things/articles and much more.
All of them have the freely available Google Maps and Google Earth as a base
but construct layers on top of it.

What about using Google Map as a base and let the user choose if he would
like to use OSM or the Google StreetMap to be shown on top of the satellite
picture. If the OSM Map is accurate in Geocoding this should not be such a
hazzle! Than you can have you German Streetmap map by OSM and all others can
use the combined satellite/streetmap view Google is providing.

I really don't like this German Nationalism. It is like poison for an really
open and a worldwide integrating OpenSource community. I really feel sorry
for that!

Andi