Open Map Maker

What is OpenMapMaker?

A simple tool for communities to create their own specialized maps, shared by community members. Community members generate very local, specialized content that is relevant to the community. Examples of maps you can create:

• Map of interesting locations in your city.
• Map of restaurants near your workplace.

OpenMapMaker is an open source map maker tool. It is an alternative to closed source mapping solutions such as Google My Maps.

See it in action

• http://akihabara.openmapmaker.com/
• http://tokyorestaurants.openmapmaker.com/

Advantages over Google My Maps

• You fully own the map data and have full control over it
• You can extend and customize the user interface
  • You can create interesting alternative user interfaces
  • You can create customized access controls
• You can extend the map data
  • Add custom content attributes
  • Add interesting new editing and controller interfaces
  • Support content in multiple languages

Disadvantages

• All the above customizations require software development skills and quite a bit of work.
• You need to setup and host your map site somewhere, maintain it, keep it up to date, take backups, all the responsibilities of running a website are yours.

Future synergies with Google My Maps

Not easy but possible. Currently we are working on “something”, to be released in stages.

1. Adopt My Maps as both the front-end (user interface) and back-end (data storage). OpenMapMaker would embed the My Maps edited map in an iframe, and possibly add some extra functions with JavaScript. This is pretty simple.
2. Make it possible to input map data through the original OpenMapMaker interface, this will make it possible for users without gmail accounts to manipulate the map data. This is not too difficult, and very interesting, as it involves learning (and using!) the Google Data API.
3. At some point, we will implement periodic downloading of map data from My Maps, for safety net purposes. If we are really smart, we can even implement synchronization, so that regardless of the front-end, map data gets stored in both My Maps and locally.

Tthese are long-term plans, and not really essential. Right now we are more excited to focus on functions that give value over Google My Maps right now, rather than in some distant future.