{"id":409,"date":"2006-11-14T12:26:19","date_gmt":"2006-11-14T17:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/14\/openstreetmap-creating-a-free-map-of-the-planet\/"},"modified":"2006-11-14T12:27:24","modified_gmt":"2006-11-14T17:27:24","slug":"openstreetmap-creating-a-free-map-of-the-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/openstreetmap-creating-a-free-map-of-the-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenStreetMap: Creating a free map of the planet"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a really interesting idea. It uses the power of open source\/wiki\/group efforts to create a free map of the planet. Now you might ask why do we need a free map of the world? Can’t we just use Google Maps or Yahoo Maps to get a map? After all they don’t charge us for access…<\/p>\n

Well yes and no. In the open source world there are two kinds of free: “free as in beer” and “free as in speech”. Google Maps are free as in beer, not as in speech. <\/p>\n

Basically since Google has to pay for the mapping data it can’t make it available for free. So even though I can access it for free online and get directions I can’t export the map data and create a map to be used on a GPS from it. That would violate Google’s copyright. You can’t copy it to your local system and fix a street name that they got wrong or add new items to the map.<\/p>\n

To fix this issue OpenStreetMap was born. It uses GPS coordinates fed to it by users to a Wiki like system and allows users to fill in information like street names etc. Which gives us surprisingly accurate and upto date data as whenever anything changes (e.g. a new street is added) anyone can edit the map and make the changes. <\/p>\n

Check it out here: OpenStreetMap<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I think I will be using my GPS on my trips from now on and upload the tracking data collected to the site. <\/p>\n

Thanks to TechRepublic<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n

– Suramya<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a really interesting idea. It uses the power of open source\/wiki\/group efforts to create a free map of the planet. Now you might ask why do we need a free map of the world? Can’t we just use Google Maps or Yahoo Maps to get a map? After all they don’t charge us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting-sites","category-techie-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}