I wanted to post an entry about a very good and useful collaboration.
The OpenStreetMap project aims to record geographical information in an open and accessible format, so anyone can find their way and create interesting devices and applications.
In the UK our governmental operated mapping data is owned and controlled, unlike the USA where data is made available in the Public Domain. So the service in the OSM for the UK is very important. I myself updated much of the mapping information for the town I grew up in, little parts that others hadn’t yet touched on.
So now, I’d like to see an Ubuntu application that is able to use OSM data, plug into GPS hardware and fuse the two into an offline mapping and route finding system. That would make netbooks very useful indeed! I’m betting someone somewhere has already taken a stab at such a program; but I’ve yet to be able to find it.
Let me know if you know.
Update: And boy did you guys not let me down… I’m compiling a list of things that people have suggested to me.
- The Nokia Maemo project has a Mapper tool which doesn’t yet work on Ubuntu.
- TangoGPS looks like it does everything, available in the repositories.
- Merkaator is a simple GPS Path recorder also available in the repositories.
- The Nav-IT project can do similar things, but looks a bit config fiddly, they have their own repository.
- If your ok with Java and with German, you might try CacheWolf.
- For the python programmers, we have PyRoute.
One missing piece I notice is route finding, it must be a difficult problem to solve. so I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a dedicated lib that could do it.