Really interesting thread! I've been thinking about it all day.
I see Ushahidi as a major catalyst in the open geodata community — and so I think it would be a missed opportunity to remain completely neutral on this important choice. But naturally I can see Erik's perspective that, on a practical level, some people just don't care about this, they just want a detailed map. I have a mockup (below) to split the different.
But actually, my initial concern was purely pragmatic, about the usability issue with the error popping up. I just have seen that error so many times, on every installation, just when I think I am done with the install. :P
I realize this seems trivial to fix for everyone on this list! But I fear that many of Ushahidi's users:
- will not understand the term "API key"
- will not have a Google account to create an API key
- will not understand the concept of map baselayers, that they can be changed
So in this sense the OSM option can be seen as the "easy setup" option — which is the very boring reason why I use OSM on all of my local development instances. It's just faster to get it running.
Also, notably, in some cases OSM is actually more detailed than Google. (And for many major cities, OSM is functionally equivalent.)
I remember last year when a high-profile Afghanistan instance was set to Google Maps even though OSM had a vastly more detailed map. It really was frustrating — we were trying to communicate with the map administrator, but he just didn't understand it, or was unwilling to change it. There was so much parallel work going into the map in the OSM community ...
And I can see this happening again in the future, especially now that OSM can use Bing for tracing. OSM has velocity now, and a team of humanitarian mappers who are deploying in many of the same areas as Ushahidi. So, some areas are exploding with mapping in response to humanitarian problems, and the OSM vs. GOOG equation is not the same as it is globally. (For example Ivory Coast has seen a bunch of edits lately in response to conflict and may eclipse Google quickly.)
Design goals in this mockup:
- to avoid the API key error by moving the final map setup step into the installer process
- to make sure the values of each map's strengths are more clearly stated in plain language
- that the map coverage is easy to compare on a per-city basis
- help the user generally understand that they can change this aspect of the page
- make it clearer that choosing Google will require an extra step
would love feedback,
c
On Dec 29, 2010, at 5:22 PM, Milo van der Linden wrote:
Would it be an option to select something like:
"I want my ushahidi instance to completely run open source and open data"
which gives people the possibility to follow their ideal? In that
case, geocoding through google and geonames would also need to be
turned off and replaced by nominatim?
2010/12/29 george chamales <
george@...>:
In addition, I believe that the system uses Google to do geolocation of
addresses that are entered into the submit report form.
George Chamales
Konpa Group
Mobile: +1 718.288.7718
Fax: +1 857.488.4002
Skype: notgeorge
http://konpagroup.com
On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 10:35 PM, Erik Hersman <erik@...> wrote:
The only problem is a practical one Chris, that is that the OSM maps don't
have nearly as much detail as Google does in many locations globally. We're
neutral on this topic, just pragmatic, as you saw when we switched from
Google to OSM in Haiti.
Erik Hersman
www.ushahidi.com | www.iHub.co.ke
www.afrigadget.com | www.whiteafrican.com | @whiteafrican
US: 407.427.0412 | Kenya: +254 729.157.257 | Skype: ezungu
On Dec 29, 2010, at 9:12 AM, Chris Blow wrote:
hello, happy Christmas everyone,
to me, it makes sense to me to use an OSM baselayer as the default map for
several reasons:
- legal: keeps the default install free of licensing issues
- design: removes the google logo from the page
- UX: avoids the nagging API key error (which is always my first
experience upon installation)
- community: strengthens a partnership with OSM, some of our strongest and
most important friends IMO
thoughts?
Cheers
c
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