this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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I've tried using it over the years but I never liked it because there was no information. So last night I looked at my local city and there is almost no information at all. I spent a few hours last night adding buildings and restaurants and removing incorrect items. It was actually kind of fun and therapeutic and I plan to do more of it tonight. My girlfriend thinks it's dumb and I'm wasting my time because Google maps and Apple maps and Bing maps exists but she just doesn't understand open source.

Edit: Apologies, I just realized this question is not Linux specific.

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[–] Positroni@positroni.ddns.net 1 points 1 year ago

I have added some nearby forest paths to OSM and added some bicycle paths alongside roads which were already mapped, using OSM mostly for outside of road network since other maps do not show forest paths and the like at all while OSM has decent coverage

[–] troybot@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Pokemon Go uses OSM for the map data in the game. I've submitted park trails by tracing them in the satellite view and now the game has all the trails.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think I used to wardrive around and add open wifi hotspots to that system when I was like 18/19. I had Linux on a laptop and had gotten a crazy wifi antenna and a USB GPS module (along with some less than legal software to crack WEP encryption) and would drive around in my van looking for routers I could hop onto and map which ones worked and had internet.

I'm not sure what map software I was using though. It was some open source thing, and the name sounds really familiar.

[–] Jaysyn@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

I've pulled data from the OSMs for building outlines & such For CAD landbase, so thanks for that.

[–] zeroscan@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Back before I felt comfortable taking my expensive smartphones running with me for the GPS purposes, I'd manually enter my running routes into RunKeeper. I don't know if they still use it, but back then their mapping was powered by OpenStreetMap. I'd add in stuff like sidewalks and trails that weren't on the map yet to make my manual entries easier. I liked doing this--it was kind of fun and I felt good contributing my knowledge of my local unimportant suburb to the world.

I've been surprised at how much is already on there, though. Out of curiosity I went to look at the map for my mom's hometown of ~500 people in the middle of nowhere and found it surprisingly complete.

I still like OpenStreetMap, but don't use it as much anymore. I wish there was a navigation app that used OSM data and was able to give me audio cues (e.g. "turn left at the next exit"), because that's 99% of my map use these days. (And if there is one that I don't know about, please let me know!)

[–] float@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

I use it a lot, mostly through OsmAnd on Android. Occasionally I also contribute missing trails and remove obsolete places.

I think many people use their data without even knowing it which is a shame. Maps.me is a very common app but everyone I talk to that's using this app never heard of OSM.

[–] caferetro@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

I have, using OSMAnd on iOS. Here in Puerto Rico there are quite a good amount of map details already.

[–] NaturalEnganche@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

I've not contributed to the main one, but I have for the humanitarian osm team, you get recently disaster stricken areas and copy roads and buildings and the like

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