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Serving up snippets of grub for the mind wallaby
It has often irritated me to see the contrast between the American and British approaches to geographical data. So much American data is free. So much British data is very expensive and it’s usage severely restricted by license in some way. So it’s great to see resources like Openstreetmap and Freethepostcode taking a grassroots approach to addressing the issue.
Openstreetmap is enlisting the help of enthusiasts armed with a handheld GPS to create an opensource, freely available, streetmap of the entire world.
This may take some time.
Especially as their homebrewed server rack oftens creaks under the strain and this makes editing a somewhat frustrating affair. But this is the early adopter zone and these issues tend to go with the territory (pun intended) .
Dan Karran and I have launched our own attempt to map the Isle of Man and to get the data onto Openstreetmap, so any Isle of Man readers who would like to assist, please get in touch.
Every UK reader with a GPS should visit Freethepostcode at least once and put in your Postcode and your Latitude and Longitude coordinates. Do your bit to create a free UK postcode coordinate list.
tags: free, Openstreetmap, GPS, opensource, streetmap, Isle of Man, Freethepostcode, Postcode, Latitude, Longitude, coordinates, UK[powered by WordPress.]
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May 4th, 2006 at 10:06 am
Don’t forget to mention Nick and his family who are also helping out with the mapping of the Island.
And you’ve done a great job mapping Port St Mary!
September 20th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Please check out my site - it uses Google maps.
Regards,
Alfred
(01983) 616322
April 8th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Google API free does not have a UK license for postcodes hence the accuracy of using Google maps for store Locators is very poor. They also cannot Gecode Ireland, Developers and agency’s have awful get rounds which often show US towns instead of UK as only based on the first 4 digits of a postcode.
In all, no professional would use Google as there are specialists such as Bing and ViaMichelin would have the full kit available for business’s
December 9th, 2011 at 2:23 am
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