[Tilesathome] Using OSM on the iPhone

[D Tucny]

2008/7/23 spaetz <osm at sspaeth.de>:

> On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 01:42:32PM +0200, Gernot wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > I'm currently developing an Application that shows nearby points of
> > interest on the iPhone. To show where they are, I use a OpenStreetMap
> > static map, served from tah.openstreetmap.org/mapOf/
>
> I am sorry that it stopped working reliably. but independently of this,
> it's not supposed to be used in an automated manner like this.
> Tiles are fetched and dynamically stitched together on each call, making
> this quite an expensive transaction compared to just fetching a few tiles
> (and doing the stitching yourself, or showing it in a small local
> openlayers).
>
> I don't encourage people to use MapOf this way. On the same note, will the
> wikimedia plugin fetch a MapOf pic for every site view, or does it the
> fetching once in a while and caches that then?
>

I can see why someone would want to be able to grab just the bit that was
needed to display on a mobile device, data transfer on a mobile device can
be expensive and slow...

But... surely uses like this should supply their own server/server side code
to make it easier for the mobile user/mobile app? e.g. a server with a
component on it that performs a similar function to MapOf but specifically
for the app fetching the full tiles itself... Or better yet... As the
original poster asked about... a server serving or using special mini mobile
tiles, probably at a lower colour depth etc to make them smaller, to
optimise it further the server side app could use these tiles to build an
image for the area requested to cut down on the number of requests... Or, as
I guess would be possible with sufficiently low usage or high server
resources, dynamic, on the fly rendering...

I guess the key bit is... The OSM tiles, tile server(s) and the tools
available are not the only way to use OSM data and that rather than making
do with things that are not ideal or potentially bad for the servers
developers of other apps should be encouraged to develop solutions that fit
their needs or find a host that can provide the tools or hosting that better
fit their needs... Everything that OSM provides made from the data should
probably be seen as an example of what can be done rather than a solution to
be used...

Maybe OSM is bringing this on itself by giving too much in way of tools and
unrestricted access? Maybe the rendered output and tools that OSM produces
should be more restricted?

d
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