Nestoria Blog

Dearest Nestophiles,

As you no doubt remember, last October we launched the first ever commercial use of OpenStreetMap maps by using OSM maps for properties in the Isle of Wight I’m very pleased to report that OSM has continued to develop since then. The recent State of the Map conference was a great chance for the community to meet, reflect on the progress made, trade tips, and plot the way forward, and we’re proud to have been able to sponsor the event.

One point that came up during the conference was that the OSM imagery we use on Nestoria, although only 10 months old, is already out of date. The change in detail in the maps is indicative of the improvement of quality we’ve seen from OSM over the last year. Have a look at these maps of Cowes

old imagery:

new imagery:

Things to note:

• better labeling
• better colouring
• green space designation
• one way streets
• walking paths

zoom in and it gets better, as you can see in this Nestoria DropIn map

property for sale

We’re not the only ones to recognize OpenStreetMap’s continued improvement. Automotive Navigation Data (AND), a leading provider of location, routing, mapping and address management are donated their entire dataset for a country to OSM

More and more OpenStreetMap is becoming a viable alternative to commercial mapping products. Congrats to all the volunteers behind OpenStreetMap. Makes one wonder if now is really a good time to spend 2 billion Euro on a mapping service.