Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ellenhp 854 days ago
> Isn't this an ad for something you're selling?

No. This is a demo of an open-source project that I've released for free.

> To me it seems like something that has been around for a very long time and is now being resold under a new label of "geocoding"

That's just what this class of software is called.

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/o...

https://docs.mapbox.com/api/search/geocoding/

https://geocode.earth/

https://github.com/komoot/photon

https://nominatim.org/

https://pelias.io/

https://www.here.com/platform/geocoding

https://developer.tomtom.com/geocoding-api/documentation/geo...

https://geocoding.geo.census.gov/geocoder/

https://github.com/Qwant/mimirsbrunn

All of these call themselves geocoders.

> 25 years ago tiny contained $100 GPS units had the entire US on a 2 GB flash card.

Yeah! Super cool feat of engineering accomplished mostly by requiring you to do structured search, if I remember correctly. I never drove with one as they were a bit before my time. I remember them being very fiddly, but that was an observation I made from the back seat of a car as a child so, grain of salt. And yes to google maps offering this for free as a part of their maps client. Not free if you're a 3rd party software developer though, as you'll see if you click through the first link I posted above.