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Today I found out that it's actually a lot easier to contribute to Open Street Map than I thought. There are some serious gaps in house addresses in my area and I was painstakingly using the built in browser editor in the browser.

But, you can use a FOSS app (available on fdroid) called StreetComplete that makes it a lot easier to help out filling in the gaps in your local map data.

It's really fun - kind of like Pokémon Go but you are actually making an impact 😁

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[-] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 22 points 1 year ago

Is there an open street map based map app that shows live traffic? I'm trying to get my grandfather to switch to open source, and he says it's the one feature he needs.

[-] Schlemmy@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 year ago

MagicEarth has got a live traffic layer for you.

[-] gonzoknowsdotcom1@monero.town 8 points 1 year ago

Magic earth is great

[-] thehellrocc@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

Unfortunately, it's not open source though.

[-] Schlemmy@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Indeed it isn't. But is privacy focused and sort of the best next thing.

[-] thehellrocc@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, I was just pointing it out for transparency, as this is the OSS community. Still a noteworthy app, though.

[-] nawordar@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

If it is free as in beer, but not as in freedom, and is developed by a company, then what is their business model?

[-] Schlemmy@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

This is what they've put on their FAQ

Magic Earth is free for all our end-users but we also have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners. For instance Selectric.de (a supplier for navigation solutions for ambulances and fire trucks), Smarter AI (developing ADAS systems) or Absolute Cycling (using the platform on bicycles). For more info on the SDK, you can check magiclane.com.

[-] nawordar@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

That explains it, thanks

[-] thejevans@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No, unfortunately not. Getting traffic data would mean users volunteering to share location data, would need a centralized system to process everything, and would need a critical mass of users sharing said data to be anywhere near useful. The other possibility would be to pay for data from a provider like Google under an enterprise license that doesn't require sharing data back, but I don't know if that is even an option.

For now, I use both on my phone. I use OSM when biking or walking, I use Google Maps when driving, and I use my local transit web app when taking transit. I plan to switch my Pixel phone to GrapheneOS and to sandbox Google services that I still need. That being said, the ultimate way around needing traffic information is to try to live in places and in such a way that driving is not very necessary, but I know that is a huge ask for a lot of people.

EDIT: To be clear, MagicEarth does have live traffic as @Schlemmy@lemmy.ml pointed out and is based on OSM, but is not itself open source.

[-] sixfold@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 year ago

time for some kind of anonymizing location data sharing service, peer to peer or federated protocol? that might be interesting, or sketchy, not sure which.

[-] cumberboi@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There is OpenTraffic but it seems unfinished and not implemented anywhere as far as i can tell. Edit: just to clarify, ive only heard from others that it's unfinished, havent checked myself :)

[-] sixfold@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

That's a super interesting project. For anyone else, the project overview has some great system level diagrams:

https://github.com/opentraffic/otv2-platform

[-] CoachDom@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago

It looks really interesting - but unfortunately it seems it's abandoned? Last time it was updated was 7 years ago...

[-] notExactlyI20@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

OSMand has a feature where it can process other info as tiles on top of the base openstreetmap data it downloads, so what I did was pulling satellite and live traffic data from google and make them work as tiles and it works perfect (although it doesnt take traffic data into consideration when routing, it only shows it as a picture on top of the map, doesn't bother me).

this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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