All the major map apps like Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Mapquest have walking directions as a standard feature, but the folks at Lumatic don’t think they are good enough. It is creating mobile maps designed for pedestrians, cyclists, and people who use public transit. Originally a TechStars company called Omniar, serial entrepreneur Scott Rafer (MyBlogLog, Lookery, Mashery) joined as CEO a year ago.
He recently raised a seed round of $800,000 from Joi Ito’s Neoteny Labs, 500 Startups, Chamath Palihapitiya, Allen Morgan, Ted Rheingold, and other angels.
Currently, the Android app covers San Fran and uses images and landmarks to route pedestrians/bikes.
Eric Fischer, digital cartographer extraordinaire, is at it again with a new series of maps that track the paths that smartphone-toting people take to travel through cities. Using geotagged tweets, the Oakland-based data visualization specialist has plotted the arteries of Twitter traffic for a host of cities around the world including Toronto.
His basemap? OSM.
- BlogTo
Someone really clever (ok me) suggests that one could build an introductory GIS course built around OpenStreetMap. It would put more hands on developing the basemap even as it taught a variety of students the basics of GIS and data collection.
Geocaching.com is the latest to move from Google Map to OpenStreetMap and Leaflet.
