Opensource Mapping
In this weeks Floss the guys interview Steve Coast from OpenStreetMap.org. I’d never heard of OpenStreetMap but it’s certainly impressive and does exactly what it says on the tin open source street maps – built as a Wiki (using RoR) to allow users to edit and contribute to maps, including paths, directions, POIs – I’ve just added some new data on the map around where I live. Looking around my areas they have way more detail than any of the ‘big’ providers, Google, Yahoo etc. Plus being open source it’s licensed under creative commons so if you’re in a position where the EULA for Google Maps just isn’t going to work for you, eg behind a login, intranet etc then it may be worth checking OpenStreetMap.org out and contributing!
The guys also spoke about Mapstraction. This is REALLY interesting. Rather than coding your maps to a specific mapping API, mapstraction provides an API to 11 of the major mapping providers allowing you to switch providers at will! Granted you would need to wait for the mapstraction API to catch up with a providers API but removing lockin to a certain provider can only be a good thing. We have a number of sites implemented with different mapping providers so being able to use a common API would be damn handy!
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Thanks for talking about our interview with Steve Coast for FLOSS Weekly! It was a really fun interview… and I even went out and fixed that street near me using my GPS track data!
This was only my 3rd Floss after listening to your excellent DHH interview and I’m hooked!!
Thanks for talking about our interview with Steve Coast for FLOSS Weekly! It was a really fun interview… and I even went out and fixed that street near me using my GPS track data!