Next-Gen GPS: Crowd-Sourced Map Apps Optimize Travel Giving ‘Snapshot of the Road at Any Given Moment’
- Posted on March 20, 2012 at 11:00pm by
Liz Klimas
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Waze allows users to update real-time traffic or directional updates to mobile GPS app.
SAN FRANCISCO (The Blaze/AP) — When Benjamin Gleitzman moved from New York to the San Francisco Bay area, he used a talking turn-by-turn driving app to guide him across the country. In the middle of Wyoming, the voice told him to turn left where there was no road.
Rather than complain to the maker of the app, called Waze, he logged in and made a note for anyone else who happened to drive that way that the road wasn’t there. It was a small gesture of consideration to his fellow travelers.
But such niceties have started to add up. Taking a page from Wikipedia, services like Waze have marshaled armies of unpaid contributors and their GPS-equipped smartphones to map wide swaths of the world from scratch. Consumers, companies and even disaster relief organizations have come to rely increasingly on such “crowdsourced” maps and their key advantage: When the landscape changes, so can the map.
Watch this guided tour of Waze:
“I can see that it gets incrementally better every day,” said Gleitzman, a 25-year-old programmer, who these days depends on Waze to steer him around traffic during his commute, thanks to hundreds of users in and around San Francisco whose cars’ speeds and locations are tracked automatically as they run the app.
Waze started in Tel Aviv in 2006 as an open-source mapping project called Freemap and today claims 14 million drivers around the world, including more than one million in Israel alone. Of those total users, the company says about 45,000 are dedicated map editors, while another 5,000 serve as regional managers to ensure the accuracy of the maps of their parts of the world.
In a video animation CEO Noam Bardin likes to show to highlight the power of the crowd, a blank screen is filled with colorful lines representing the highways and streets traveled by Waze users in Tel Aviv over 24 hours to create an intricately detailed map of the city:
“Our goal in life is to save you five minutes a day on your way to work,” Bardin said. But the company believes the massive amount of geographic data its users generate can also do more. “It became very clear this is going to be the way to map the world.”
OpenStreetMap is another effort founded on the same belief but more closely follows the nonprofit Wikipedia model. Like Wikipedia, the volunteer-written online encyclopedia, anyone can go to the OpenStreetMap website and add or edit information. And anyone can use the maps — to find their way or to build their own map-based apps — for free.
Here is an into to OpenStreet Map:
Conceived in the U.K. in the early 2000s by a lone British programmer, the service has since grown to a half-million registered mappers, including 16,000 heavily active contributors, according to the organization’s wiki. Especially popular in Britain and Germany, OpenStreetMap is built by users who trace their travels on GPS units then connect the dots to draw highways, streets and hiking trails on digital maps. Volunteer trekkers worldwide have logged more than 2.7 billion such GPS points on the map so far.
Using OpenStreetMap can be as simple as going to the main website and searching for a location, as with the popular Google Maps. But the guts of OpenStreetMap are not maps at all but geographic data that anyone can use for free to build whatever maps they choose.
The price appears to be right for some companies. Popular location-based social networking service Foursquare switched to OpenStreetMap late last month to show its 15 million users where their friends are “checking in.”
Days after Foursquare’s announcement, as the tech world obsessed over the latest iPad, OpenStreetMap mappers began chattering online about what they believe were their unique contributions showing up on maps in Apple’s new iPhoto app.
“We’re delighted to see another prominent map user make the switch,” wrote OpenStreetMap volunteer Jonathan Bennett on the service’s official blog, adding that he hopes that Apple soon will be crediting the service, as required under terms of its free use.
Apple declined to comment.
Bennett started using OpenStreetMap in 2006 as a way to keep track of his favorite uncharted mountain biking trails in the British countryside around his hometown of Guildford southwest of London. He has since mapped much of the region.
In recent crises, OpenStreetMap has served as more than a handy resource.
Along with the staggering loss of life, the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010 dramatically altered the country’s geography, especially in the capital city of Port-Au-Prince. Buildings disappeared, refugee camps sprung up and streets ended in piles of rubble.
OpenStreetMap quickly became a go-to resource for disaster relief workers, who both relied on the map’s real-time updates and contributed their own knowledge as they encountered changes in the city’s terrain.
Whether mapping roads blocked by the Japan earthquake and tsunami or updating the location of new highways, stores or subway stations the day they open, Bennett said the responsiveness of crowdsourced maps to change represents a new way of charting the world: “OpenStreetMap can keep up with the pace of progress in a way that no other way of making maps can.”
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tchall
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 4:10pmThe mundane part of the story is that mapmakers have put little nonexistant details on their maps for quite a while… it makes it a LOT easier to prosecute a copyright violator if they’ve added a small bend in a straight road right in the middle of Wyoming…just like the one on the map they stole
If you look at most any map you’ll find (wrong) details that don’t mean much, but they are just significant enough to identify that map as copyrighted material beloning to that specific company.
The electronic maps are just using a trick that’s been used for decades before.
Report Post »Brannigans Law
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 12:41pmMany people prepare, with guns strapped to their sides, to stop an Orwellian government from placing RFID chips in their heads. Ironically, they simultaneously and willingly carry one around in their purse, on their belt or in their pocket; anxiously shilling out hundreds of dollars for the latest Smartphone from a company that tracks their every movement and compels them to purchase an additional data plan for the privilege. As George Carlin aptly pointed out, “when fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jackboots. It will be Nike sneakers and smiley shirts. Smiley-smiley.” I’m not saying I don’t have a cell phone. I’m just saying sheeple happily comply with Big Brother’s will just to shave some time off their commute and text each other shopping lists. Have I mentioned my latest bowel movement on Facebook yet?….
Report Post »bum
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 11:27amthey had this when i visited Japan in 2006…
Report Post »SRPDS
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 7:47amthis app is nothing new…i downloaded it over a year and a half ago…
Report Post »Tolkayn
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 7:41amThat’s an awesome application of technology!
Report Post »Komrade_Loqd_ThePeoplesCube
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 2:45amThere are a variety of fantastic ideas potententially pending to make Waze THE mobile navigation client.
A mojor issue is loss of connectivity. For some this is tunnel based, for others box canyons. Many people with “3G” run into low- or zero data coverage areas.
Dead Reckoning to the rescue
http://waze.uservoice.com/forums/59223-client-how-can-we-improve-waze-on-your-phone-/suggestions/2360157-dead-reckoning-when-neither-data-nor-gps-available
Waze uses “crowd” intelligence and DOT sensors. But it lacks RE-routing intelligence. One is left to suffer traffic or risk fiddling with the device. This suggested feature will allay all those concerns:
http://waze.uservoice.com/forums/59223-client-how-can-we-improve-waze-on-your-phone-/suggestions/2360039-re-route-based-on-upcoming-traffic-conditions-congestions
Waze has an extant feature to report policy or STATIONARY speed traps. It does not however allow one to report moving Highway Patrol. A proposed feature to pace pacing Highway Patrol vehicles will be a grand equalizer:
http://waze.uservoice.com/forums/59223-client-how-can-we-improve-waze-on-your-phone-/suggestions/2359950-police-trailing-leading-in-motion-vs-stationary-
We need to be able to add friends without having to suffer “social” “networking”
http://waze.uservoice.com/forums/59223-client-how-can-we-improve-waze-on-your-phone-/suggestions/1681513-add-friends-without-using-social-network
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Report Post »Just in time
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 2:21amTim your a jerk. It’s not conditioning. It’s called info.
Report Post »Itsjusttim
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 12:26amHere‘s the thing that’s kind of sad: that Glenn Beck has actually been helping to condition people for Communism by exposing them to all the bad news in advance so it doesn’t shock them so much, and they are actually becoming more like the flesh of Communism, because they are having time to think about it, and getting all worked up in advance, and becoming more accepting of the idea of it while other forces draw attention to their mortality. I‘m afraid it’s been for naught, unless he’s just trying to keep his business alive longer. I’m not attacking you Glenn, it’s just the plain truth.
Report Post »Itsjusttim
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 12:34amSorry buddy, but I tried to tell you when I posted comments about Moses putting his hand into his breast and it turned snow white, and then he put it back into his chest and it came out as his own flesh.
Report Post »Itsjusttim
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 12:37amNobody out here really knows you, they only know the things you talk about.
Report Post »Arizona Don
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 2:40amWhat are you smoking?
Report Post »Baddoggy
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 7:09am@Tim…Got your arms out of your straightjacket again?
Report Post »Communism is already here. Read the EO signed by YOUR President on Friday…But you are an Obamabot so you probabaly wont understand it.
lukerw
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 12:17amJust Great… a way to avoid RIOT & WAR ZONES!
Report Post »Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 12:22amDude, if they could just let me know what the traffic is like between the bed and the coffee pot in the morning, that would be golden……”There is a dog jacknifed in front of your door, your wifes purse is at the end of the stairs. be aware, your son left his backpack in the hallway. Dude, you forgot to program and fill the coffee pot. Expected wait time, 15 minutes.”
Now that would be helpful.
Report Post »Free2speakRN
Posted on March 21, 2012 at 12:05amWhat a good idea for Big Government.
Report Post »randy
Posted on March 20, 2012 at 11:55pmNo Thanks. I‘ll stick with my gas station map and bring a book along in case there’s a traffic jam.
Report Post »SenorStrange
Posted on March 20, 2012 at 11:29pmWaze is a nice idea but the app requires permission to access your phones voice recording function and access to the camera at any time. not a chance.
Report Post »Stoic one
Posted on March 20, 2012 at 11:26pmsome gov’t worker is no doubt trying to figure out how to tax these……..
Report Post »OlefromMN
Posted on March 20, 2012 at 11:23pmIn my best Glenn Beck voice….
“Isn’t that great! We can see exactly who is around us at any given point in time. I am sure this will only be used for good purposes”
Report Post »inblack
Posted on March 20, 2012 at 11:29pmAmen – this will be used to fine us, tax us, track us like animals and finally strip us of our privacy and liberty.
Report Post »LIVINGTHEDREAM
Posted on March 20, 2012 at 11:06pmTry to save 5 minutes from Belgrade to Bozeman in the morning. Nice try people. Maybe somewhere else.
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