Just a short personal progress report after roughly one year going european:
Changes:
- Google search -> ecosia
- Gmail -> proton mail
- Google drive -> proton drive
- Google calendar -> family wall
- Google photos -> zeitkapsl
- Google authenticator -> aegis
- Amazon -> kaufland marketplace
- Reddit -> fediverse (lemmy)
- Pixel (because it stopped working) -> fairphone
- Paypal -> sepa/wero/klarna
Quit without alternative:
- Disney+
Still using:
- Netflix (want to finish “better caul saul”)
- Google maps (too convenient for searching restaurants and shops)
- Steam
Of course I am also conscious about groceries or other material purchases.
Just fyi, there are pirates on the world wide web handing out free copies of Better Call Saul and a lot of other popular series in exchange for serving you some annoying pop-ups. If you prefer streaming over downloading you could give himovies.sx a try (turn on your adblocker first though).
Also i still use Google Maps because of information on there, but made an OpenStreetMap account to input some of the data from my favourite local shops/bars etc. I exit the app before navigating to minimise the amount of data i give Google.
Stremio might work better if usability on a smart TV is a factor. Otherwise, sites like P-Stream (Movie-Web successor) switch between a free array of online streaming servers, or one could obtain the releases individually via torrents, usenet, or sometimes archive.org.
I just checked and there seem to be a lot more shop informations than the last time I checked a year ago. Maybe there really are more people contributing recently.
I also downloaded an app called StreetComplete to help out, although it is asks much more about adding information on infrastructure than on shops etc. I got it on f-droid, might be available through other channels as well.
A nice thing about StreetComplete is that you can choose what kind of ‘quests’ you want to do. Whether that’s looking for store opening times or what kind of curb a pedestrian crossing has is up to you!
Personally I think it’s great that you can add so much more info to the map tham Google ever will. I like contributing to a map that helps society, e.g. by adding accessibility information.
The big downside of StreetComplete is that it’s not made for adding new things to the map. It only asks for more detailed information about locations it already knows about.
Well done!
Organic Maps (OM) and other OSM-based stuff works well for restaurants etc. but the OM-algorithm for finding the best route could be better
What about “here wego”. They seem to have the same osm data. Maybe with better route planning?
Here WeGo is proprietary and not based on OpenStreetMap, but given that it’s the only option in the U.S. with live traffic data that didn’t stoop to renaming the Gulf of Mexico with fascist propaganda, it’s the one I’ve been using.
If you want to support European companies then Here is apparently majority owned by a group of German companies (Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Bosch, Continental) with 15% owned by Intel and the remaining 31% owned by Japanese companies (Mitsubishi, NTT, Pioneer).
I’ve been experimenting with Here Wego. It’s not quite Google Maps, but it’s not bad and has a lot of nice features like live public transport info. Perhaps the thing I like least is that its information about businesses seems to come from TripAdvisor, which is a shame because I find that site a bit unreliable
Gonna give it a try.
CoMaps works almost, but not quite, as well as Google Maps in my chunk of Canada. Might be worth trying? I believe it is based on the OSM data.
It is indeed an app for using openstreetmap
Tell me about kaufland marketplace!
It’s basically a platform for online shops. So my only complain would be that you often find the same product from different vendors with different prices which can be a bit confusing and annoying.
