January 26, 2012

Switch to Open Street Maps

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was hoping to see wider adoption of Open Street Maps this year, and the new site Switch2OSM.org is a great resource, with articles ranging from "Why Switch?" to different tiling sets & server strategies. With Google's recent announcement that they're going to share data and identity between projects & products, I expect this initiative will find the wind at it's back.

People don't think about location search as something that betrays confidential data, but of course it does — starting with where you live, work and shop. Of course lots of people proactively share this data with Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, and other products, but as Google reduces the number of privacy controls that they allow users to control, they cede one of the last philosophical differences (advantages?) they had over Facebook.

Jan 26, 2012 12:00:54 PM | Current Affairs, Terra Cognita, Web/Tech

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