I have a new hobby that gets me out walking in my neighborhood, even down side streets I've never visited. It also forces me to slow down and notice all the details I've never stopped to take in!
The hobby? Contributing to OpenStreetMap. I found an app called Street Complete that makes it exceptionally easy, basically it just asks you questions about features along your walking route. Thanks to doing this, I've discovered several hidden features of the neighborhood like small public gardens full of herbs, public library boxes, and more.
Doing it also feels constructive, because I know I'm helping build up a resource to challenge Google's near-monopoly. It's very satisfying to clear all the dots from the map, and I find myself looking forward to my walks and planning out which streets I'll walk next.
I haven't used it for a few years but a while back I had street complete and went in a road trip visiting family, and I was able to map a big portion of each of their neighborhoods.
It also helped me discover a lot of hidden trails around my own neighborhood and eventually one of my gpx traces ended up marking out previously unmapped path through the woods, that even google does not yet have.
OpenStreetMap is so much better for trails that it's actually no contest. Plus, the maps can be downloaded offline, so even when you're out of the cellular service area you can still have full access.
This sounds awesome I'll look into it! I bet the folks over at the Degoogle Yourself community would like to see this. Not sure how to crosslink though.
Yeah, that's a bit different than what this is. Street Complete is meant to be accessible to anyone, even if they've never used OSM. It specifically asks you for missing information. I've used OSM editors before and really didn't know what I should be adding. This has way less skill required.
We've been doing one called CityStrides that similarly has us exploring places we've never set foot before in our town. There are some issues with the data it uses from Open Street Map on occasion so the community are pretty good about getting things fixed up on the OSM side so they can get their completions on the CS side.
There are plenty of open source apps on iOS. Apple has nothing to do with that.
Either way, I know it takes time to develop apps and I don’t expect anything. But I’m also not going to switch to Android just to volunteer my own time.