|
|
|
|
|
|
by ZeroGravitas
4699 days ago
|
|
|
Students collecting geo-data to improve the mapping of their local area, and donating it to a single corporate entity in a way that neither competing corporate entities nor free culture projects can use. Hmm. Also, this puff piece is about Nokia's Here maps, yet when I go to their website (or Bing) Belarus is an empty wasteland. But in Google maps and OSM, there's an incredible amount of detail. So what problem where they attempting to solve? They seem to be claiming the government is to blame for the problem, but that doesn't seem to have held Google back. edit: and on the mention of OSM, I have noticed that the amount of OSM contributers who are Russian-speaking has exploded recently. Looking at the comparison between OSM and Nokia/Navteq maps in the area I can now understand why. |
|
|
To the contrary. Google's map data in Belarus also comes from volunteers. For all we know, most of the volunteers who supplied the data for Google Maps and OpenStreetMap may also be working on Nokia Maps now.
The problem they are attempting to solve is that Nokia maps does not have Belarus map data. The fact that Google and OSM have that data is useless to Nokia, and to all GPS device companies that license from Nokia.
The incentive for these volunteers is that in a few years, they'll be able to tell a visitor, "Just enter the address into your GPS," knowing that it'll work. If they supplied the map data only to OSM and withheld it from commercial organizations like Google and Nokia, then they won't be able to accomplish that.