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CoMaps @ #DIDay (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/CoMaps@sopuli.xyz
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Since the #39c3 in December, every first Sunday of the month has been a "Digital Independence Day" for trying out alternatives to dominant/big tech platforms.

If you're looking to explore alternatives to Google or Apple Maps, why not give CoMaps – or any of the other open source map-applications that are based on data from #OpenStreetMap – a try!

You can learn more about the #DIDay here: https://edri.org/our-work/didit-edri-members-spark-movement-for-alternatives-to-big-tech/

#DIDit

a sharepic showing a black and white photo of a broken chain, with the text comaps @ #didit digital independence day overlayed next to a colorful CoMaps screenshots showing robben island (one of the locations suggested in a former social media campaign for places that would make good screenshots)
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[–] 9 points 8 months ago (5 children)

That's going to be extremely expensive for them to host a server (probably multiple all over the world), isn't it? Streaming images would probably not be as bad as video but still quite a lot of bandwidth / CPU usage, no?

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    (Personally I don't understand why you'd want to do that instead of downloading for offline use but I know I'm weird with not having mobile data anyway, so ...)

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    I don't "want to do that" but I tried to make the point that many users heavily rely on that. I can work with offline maps, but I'm not above admitting it's a tad more work that, for most, is a real deal breaker

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Not weird. I keep my phone on airplane mode unless I'm actively making a phone call, for privacy reasons (here in the USA, cell tower data is sold to anyone with money through data brokers). Using a mobile map app (Google, Bing, HereWeGo, etc.) with location services on would be pretty bad for privacy. I like the fact that CoMaps works even when the location service is off (unless I don't know where I am and I need the current location) and the airplane mode is on.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    In a perfect world, you'd have both.

    First, instant streaming as you browse the map while internet connected, so you don't deal with delays, don't have to wait for the map to download before you can do anything with it. And while doing that, also download offline maps in the background, without interrupting the user.

    But, yeah, I can definitely see why a open source project with limited resources wouldn't be able to make streaming available.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Actually it should be fairly trivial to host this in a peer to peer fashion, in the background. Depending on how much you want cached in your device, you could have in local storage all the maps that cover, lets say, 100Km from your position. Satellite would be more data intensive, but the same concept applies. All data would be distributed, and since most have unlimited data plans, hosting and bandwidth would essentially be free.

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