[Spam?] Re: google earth - [was: Re: Another simple GPS+GPRS idea]

[Sam Kome]

I have a bit of experience in GIS data and applications. Okay, a lot.

Sean is absolutely right about the rarity and high price of street maps,
not to mention the legal rights problems which can drag in Queens and
Kings.

The first question to answer is: what is the necessary accuracy?
If you're not routing ambulances then there may be adequate data
available from public sources. Availability varies tremendously by
country, even by internal divisions, but streets are always changing,
hence more difficult to obtain.  

If street level geocoding is needed, one approach would be to take
advantage of Google or Yahoos geocoding APIs. Would work for a limited
(but large) number of hits/day, and for a non-commercial application.  

For basic context like major roads, landmarks, postal code or political
boundaries, data may well be available for free or the cost of bashing
them into a useful shape.  These data also have the advantage of smaller
file sizes.

Hope this helps.

-----Original Message-----
From: community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org
[mailto:community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org] On Behalf Of Sean
Moss-Pultz
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 10:25 AM
To: Marcus Bauer; community at lists.openmoko.org
Subject: [Spam?] Re: google earth - [was: Re: Another simple GPS+GPRS
idea]
Importance: Low

On 11/27/06 8:16 PM, "Marcus Bauer" <marcus.bauer at gmail.com> wrote:

> You may ask Sean about availability of maps for the Neo1973 (a quick
> search in the ML-archives gives no hits).

Mapping data is actually really difficult. There are only two providers
worldwide:

* Navitec
* TeleAtlas

And they are really expensive. We have some commercial software lined up
that we could sell, but I'm not too excited at anything at this point.
Hopefully we can come up with something free together.

-Sean


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