[OSM-talk] Wayfinder now open source, and with OSM data

[SomeoneElse]

On 21/07/2010 11:48, Andy Allan wrote:
>
> Initially sounds cool, but I have no idea what it actually is, or how
> cool it actually is :-) If someone can translate from "Wayfinder talk"
> to OSM language (e.g. is it an alternative to nominatim, or geoserver,
> or whatnot) then I'd have a better idea about it!
>
>    

I had a play about with the Blackberry version of Wayfinder a few years 
ago.  It's standard turn-by-turn routing software that ran on a variety 
of mobile phones.  The main difference between it and GPSs such as 
Garmin / TomTom units is that the data's all held on the back-end server 
not on the device.  I only tested it for driving routing (not walking or 
cycling; not sure that it supported those).  It worked well for me - the 
on-device software did what it needed to and the back-end server and 
data (whose at the time I'm not sure) did a better job of routing then 
some other commercial software I could mention (navigating around the 
Derbyshire Peak District it neither tried to use only A roads nor roads 
marked "unsuitable for motors").  The user interface was less whizzy 
than current commercial offerings but that was a few years ago and might 
have been improved since.  The downsides compared to a 70 quid satnav 
from Halford's were that it required GPRS coverage for routing and if 
you were on a limited bandwidth data contract it used some of it.

Looking at the Voda / Wayfinder site it looks like the client side code 
is split into two - a generic (presumably raw-ish Java) bit and a device 
specific access layer (on a Blackberry for instance for a consistent UI 
you'd probably want to do a lot of stuff through RIM's APIs).  Re the 
server bit we've no idea what postprocessing they did on the commercial 
data that they used to use for routing or if they've used the same TLC 
on the OSM data that they're now pointing at.

In addition being a potentially "nice use of OSM" it's potentially 
interesting for another reason - some organisations are reluctant to use 
3rd-party map providers because whenever a client wants to display a map 
they're telling the 3rd party where they are.  There are turnkey 
offerings out there but they can be very expensive; this has the 
potential not to be.

Cheers,
(another) Andy