[OSM-talk] Big sponsors (was: WolframAlpha uses OpenStreetMap data)

[Ben Last]

Just to chime in on the topic...

On Jun 17, 2010, at 7:18 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> To paraphrase (not specifically Wolfram, but the unnamed other megacorps
you're chatting with):
> 1. they'd like to link to us directly but our infrastrucutre is too weak;
> 2. they would not want to give us a shitload of money to improve our
infrastructure, but could imagine hosting something;
> 3. there is fear that the community would view this negatively.

Most people on the talk-au list (or OSM'ing in Australia) will know about
NearMap (e.g.
http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-33.857061,151.215236&z=18&t=h&nmd=20100510).  We
use the OSM data as the basis of our street maps, and actively support the
use of our PhotoMaps to extend OSM data (for instance, click the edit button
on our map page and you'll be dropped into Potlatch with our PhotoMaps as a
background to trace from).  We also use opaque map tiles generated from OSM
data for our map page in StreetMap mode.

We see serving StreetMap tiles as a key part of what we do, and are happy to
handle the load.  We're working hard to get our maps to be updated faster
from the core OSM data, so at some point we will be a viable Big Third-Party
Tile Server.

We also see it as key to OSM that we help to make editing as easy as
possible for the largest number of contributors, and we're actively looking
at ways to support simple edits such as adding addresses (addr:housenum,
etc) and naming un-named streets directly on our site, sending the edits
back to the OSM servers asap.  We're not intending to directly handle
feedback... we get enough of that already by email and tend to fix up the
OSM data ourselves, but of course that's not scalable.

Frederick's post is relevant; we have some concerns about the OSM
infrastructure, in that if the servers are down for any significant period
of time, or slow to respond, we need to be able to continue to show rapid
responses to edits made on our site.  That's technically a considerable
challenge.  We're also concerned about the OSM community reaction, and keen
to get relevant feedback about what we're doing and how we can best support
and improve OSM data.

On 18 June 2010 09:27, SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:

> I think you're concentrating on tiles, but that's not really the bottleneck
> I would jump on first.
>  The conversation goes like this:
>  "steve we have 300 million people a day look at our site and we would like
> to send their edits and feedback to OSM"
>  Really it's the API we're talking about. Tiles are just a CDN problem.
>

I'm not going to suggest specific figures, but we do expect to be sending a
*lot* of edits back to OSM, though not feedback.

Best regards
Ben

-- 
Ben Last
Development Manager (HyperWeb)
NearMap Pty Ltd
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