not all navigation technologies are created equal
In my job, I look at a lot of maps (part of my job is to work on routing and directions for our products). Our maps, Google's maps, Yahoo's maps, Microsoft's maps, ... The quality of map data from different vendors varies greatly, though I've only seen the data from two major vendors so far. There is one that I prefer, but perhaps that is due to familiarity.

There has been idle chitchat around the water cooler about using free data and software from something like openstreetmap.org. This is not serious talk, there is zero chance in hell of us switching to such products, but we get some giggles here and there. One of the reasons why no one is taking the idea seriously is because of the quality of product.

Firstly, the map data in certain areas is complete garbage; it's like a 5-year old with a set of crayons started drawing and said "this is my map". You only need to look at the area around Irvine and UCI in Google maps (with satellite images enabled to see how well things line up) and compare it with the osm.org stuff to see what I mean. Specifically look at the 73, the intersections with 73, etc. I would consider picking up a GPS unit and driving around to help (when I get my motorcycle), but I fear that such a hobby would begin to take up months of my life (just for the UCI area) due to the quality (or lack thereof) of the data that is already present. I think I'll pass. Those of you in Minnesota can also look at the Twin Cities area to notice that St. Paul isn't even listed as you zoom in. Wow, missing an entire city; the second city in the Twin Cities. What the crap?

That people have actually written software to convert the osm format data to img format to be used by Garmin GPS navigation devices makes me want to cry. Pay for the $100 yearly updates people! Or use a product that doesn't need to be updated (VZ Navigator for Verizon cell phones, AAA Mobile for certain Sprint handsets, ...)! But when your data is crap, you can't expect anything worthwhile to come from routing on it.

Even worse, the libraries and software are all written in Java to access the standard data storage system of MySQL (whose criticism I'll pass on expressing), which combine to make a practical cross-country routing system (with sub-1 second routes from LA to NYC) not possible. I could go on, but I won't.


Those of you who like using GPS units and making maps: openstreetmap.org could use your help. For everyone else who just wants to use the data: stick with your commercial mobile navigation setup (telephone, garmin, tomtom, magellan, etc.).