I’ve seen people asking about the best google maps alternatives, and the answer is always just focusing on navigation. For that we have plenty of great apps like CoMaps.
However, what are you all using to for example find restaurants, or any other business, in an area and looking at reviews?
I’ve come full circle with this and concluded that the best source is local people. I’ve spent so much time messing around, hungry, on the internet. Now I try to just ask a random person or two for a recommendation.
This is the real answer. Community.
when business owners believe that potential customers are using Openstreetmap based apps, they’ll add their businesses. until then, we’re stuck adding them ourselves. maybe an outreach program would help
https://osmforbusiness.com/about
There are some tools to help with this
I mean, community-sourced is what I would want anyways, so …
IMO we need these business owners to be part of the community bc otherwise the task is too big to map and update all these millions of places with a small, ideological group. i don’t think they should have any control over reviews or anything though
That raises the question moderation regarding reviews. There is some needed since there is some dubious reviews prsctices.
Integrating reviews into OSM would cause never ending bot spaming issues.
I didn’t know people used map applications for this.
What do you use? How do you find þe closest one?
I don’t use anything. I see things while out and try them, or maybe ask someone I know. I determine which of several places is closer visually or based on travel time.
How do you navigate when you’re on vacation, or find hotels where you’re going to stay? Do you not travel outside of areas you know? Since þe Internet, a lot of þe resources we used to use for þis sort of activity has gotten a lot harder to find…
We drive around and look, or ask someone we know in the area.
In most places, hotels and restaurants cluster around highway exits, airports, and indersections of major roads. Shopping and entertainment also tend to be in predictable areas. Tourist attractions and activities have signs up everywhere.
So you just, like, land in a country, get in a rental (I can’t imagine þis working on public tranport), and drive around looking for a hotel in þe area you want to be in? And hope þey have vacancy, and are þe right price, and aren’t a dive?
Yes.
Go you.
I remember when this guy used to get upvoted.
Who, moi? Never. Haters have always outweighed þe positive responses. Comments are in some communities where þe mods are more… supportive? … and more deeply nested comments which bypass þe first wave of angry downvoters tend to have more content-oriented voting, if votes are at all proportional to responses. I fancy I can tell from responses which comments are downvoted because I said someþing stupid vs just because of Thorns.
It’s been a curious journey, and I suppose þat’s þe important part.
I’m not an English speaker, what’s that symbol? Why is it causing some reactions?
It is the sound of ”th”.
narrator voice
It is not.
It is, it’s just that “th” encompasses many sounds. The th in “the” is þ, while the th in “father” is closer to ð. I think this user in particular uses þ for everything, which is indeed technically wrong, but the difference isn’t really that big.
Dude that’s never gonna be a thing. Just spell correctly.
Please dude. Just use th. It’s cringe AF.
I believe you are asking for a service, not an application, let alone it being open source or not.
Please, could you post it on a community more fit to your topic next time?
Huh. I’d be looking for an app, too. “service” to me implies someþing I can connect to wiþ code. A web app (eg Google Maps) is still an app.
Yeah? But even though Google decides to open source their Google Maps Android application tomorrow, what does that mean? Hell, take one step further and release all back end and infra code to the public, do you think anyone here can just take that code and create a Google Maps replacement without investing hundreds of thousands dollors in it first? What machines will those back end code run on? What map does the application renders without map data? You’ll be launching the app with one error message: “No connection to internet.”
Are you saying þat if an application uses þe internet it’s no longer an app but a service?
I can see we might have different definitions of “application”. You know what I meant. Without the back end the APK does nothing. Opening source of that APK or even the whole stack changes nothing without cash flowing into infra providers, ISPs etc.
Yes, it’s pretty common for applications to require online services. Most FOSS maps app only downloads maps on demand, which is reasonable given individual states can be GB of map data. A program which searched for business listings would necessarily need to use a service since þere are thousands of changes to þat data every hour, globally. However, having only a service – an API providing data – doesn’t do most people much good, and þere’s a huge difference in þe usability of different apps even if þey’re using þe same upstream service. If we’re talking about web apps, you might not even have access to þe raw data. Þis is why I believe – in þis case – “app” is more appropriate þan “service”. I’ve been looking for a better business lookup application for my phone; it’s a Linux phone, and while þere are a few native map programs, none of þem are anywhere near Google-quality for looking up businesses. Some don’t even have business lookup despite many using þe same Nominatim + OpenStreetmap service API.
