[OSM-talk] Using OpenStreetMap on a daily basis

[Kai Krueger]

In general I agree with a lot of your points, and too find it still rather
difficult to use OSM on a daily basis as a map solution. Too often I find my
self having to revert to using google maps even though I do know many of the
listed third party sites. My main issues are public transport routing and to
a lesser degree geocoding / search as the OSM solutions are generally less
flexible or forgiving to inaccuracies. For more special interest purposes,
OSM on the otherhand often does win out already compared to gmaps.

However, I think the situation is improving and the usefulness of OSM.org
could be improved  further helping the OSM brandname, without having to be a
full google maps replacement.

With regard to competing with commercial OSM users: My impression is that
nearly all businesses around OSM, aren't really trying to be a direct
competitor to google maps either. And with perhaps the exception of open
mapquest, non of them are trying to build an end-user facing mapping portal
as a website. Instead nearly all of them are trying to sell products and
services or use OSM data directly in third party sites like Fourscare,
craigslist, News sites, or games, where maps are important, but not the
central focus of the company. Or they use OSM in the mobile domain.

So expanding osm.org to cater to more of average joe's mapping needs won't
hurt any of the OSM based businesses, as it doesn't impact their business
model. To the contrary, I am sure most of them would love to see a
strengthening of the OSM brand and an associated improvement of the mapdata. 
And even if it did. OSM's primary purpose isn't to provide businesses with
free resources to make money.

Commenting on some of your points more directly:

Guillaume Pratte wrote
> Second point: accessing POI information. I cannot click on point of
> interests (POI) to get more info about them. Why do we input address,
> business hours and phone numbers on shops and restaurants if the map
> cannot easily display this information to the user? Why do I have to show
> the map's data in order to have information on a point of interest?

This has been on the wish list for a while, as this feature is rather
important / useful even if you don't want to cater to the "end-user". By
visualising more of the currently hidden data, it is likely to encourage
more mappers to add the data. However, this feature seems to have mostly
failed due to a lack of developers adopting this project and getting
bringing it to conclusion.  Also there was never quite consensus over what
the technically best way to implement this feature was to be scalable enough
for osm.org. However, if there is a developer who could push this feature,
there is a good chance that it would end up on osm.org


Guillaume Pratte wrote
> Third point: maximum zoom level. Some area are densely populated, and
> OpenStreetMap's current zoom level is not enough to see all details of the
> map. This is really unfortunate. Example: http://osm.org/go/cIrNs6Qzp--
> What are the restaurant surrounding the Hard Rock Café on this map? I have
> to use the editor to be able to zoom and see all data.

This aspect at least is likely going to be "fixed" soon. Once the new
rendering server is in production there hopefully will be a Z19 (
http://orm.openstreetmap.org/#19/45.49753/-73.57669 )


Guillaume Pratte wrote
> Fifth point: routing. Why is there absolutely no routing implemented on
> the main OpenStreetMap website? This is I concede a naïve question, as it
> might be simply because of limited server resources. Once we have our new
> servers, is this something we want to implement, as a community?

This has also been on the todo list for a long time. There also exists at
least a partial implementation ( http://apmon.dev.openstreetmap.org/routing#
), but it never quite reached the necessary maturity to actually get merged.
Furthermore, so far the server resources to run the backend of a full scale
routing engine weren't available. Once Phase II of the funding drive (
http://blog.openstreetmap.org/2013/06/26/extending-funding-drive/ ) has
completed that might change and hopefully routing will finally be added to
the main page. But things don't always progress as quickly as one would like
in a large community driven project.

Kai



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