[OSM-dev] openstreetmap could start at user's approximate location using geo-ip

[D Tucny]

2009/1/18 Nigel Magnay <nigel.magnay at gmail.com>

> http://www.maxmind.com/app/locate_my_ip got me pretty much exactly..
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 12:26 PM, Tom Hughes <tom at compton.nu> wrote:
>
>> Shaun McDonald wrote:
>>
>> > I'll just add that it does it on a country level, rather than city or
>> > state level.
>>
>> Indeed - the free GeoIP databases aren't really good enough to do much
>> more than that. I'm not even sure the commercial ones are really, though
>> they will probably claim otherwise.
>>
>>
>> It was only 1200km out for me... but, it did get the country correct...

As far as I see it, the best you can expect is to get the correct country,
anything better can't be expected for general use...
I just wish that all the companies that make use of GeoIP stuff didn't
ignore the languages that the browser offers up and instead choose the
language that they feel appropriate based on your location... That can get
pretty frustrating, more so when the option to change the language is hidden
within a menu structure in the language they chose for you or better yet,
when they don't provide an option to override the language...

Anyway, back to OSM... default of zoom and center to country is plenty I
think, unless overridden with a location in user prefs... And, if/when we
get multiple language caption layers, please don't extend the GeoIP stuff to
pick a language based on location too :)

d
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/attachments/20090118/9f9db7b9/attachment.html>