cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1371422/mapquests-app-surges-to-no-1-in-navigation-after-refusing-to-rename-lake-ontario
Source: MapQuest on Bluesky
MapQuest also released an online tool that lets you jokingly rename Lake Ontario to whatever you want it to be, then share the results on social media.
Don’t fall for the marketing. MapQuest uses Open Street Maps data and slaps ads or a paid subscription on top of it. They aren’t ALLOWED to change it, because it is not their data,it is a community project. There are plenty of FOSS clients for OSM, most notably CoMaps.
That being said, I’ve also found OSM to be unusably bad in my area so whatever.
OSM pulls from a few different sources, but for exact details it’s the community that enters the data. Can’t find an address or business? Add it and then it’ll be there for everyone.
Exactly. Just add what’s missing yourself. It’s kinda fun to edit the map of your local area and its super helpful for others.
Okay but I don’t need a map for places I know well enough to edit and I don’t really find myself randomly looking at maps of areas I know well
People will move to anything but the open stuff
The open stuff kinda sucks with traffic though
I think traffic data matters to a lot of people. Granted MapQuest has a traffic API that FOSS could use for data.
I’ve noticed the same trend.
Why is the name changing? The article didn’t even say why
Trump issued an executive order to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America the other day. Google Maps pulls its name data from the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), and so once GNIS updated to follow the executive order, that change flowed down to Google Maps. It’s pretty much the same thing that happened with the Gulf of Mexico/ Gulf of America thing last year.
Geez what a joke. Thanks for explaining it
Is MapQuest for Android some weird 8-bit thing, or did I just download some random app with the same name.
Ha — it looked like that in the AppStore too and I left when I saw the 8-bit stuff. Maybe that is their app?
Yeah, I googled a bit and found it is their app:
https://help.mapquest.com/hc/en-us/articles/38308169880461-Changing-your-Questie-preferences
Reminder - if you subscribe to the name change - that the mnemonic for the Great Lakes has changed from HOMES to SHAME, with America right in the middle of it. You couldn’t make this up.
If you subscribe to the name change you probably can’t read this anyway.
Reminder that the mnemonic for the Great Lakes has changed from HOMES
… no it hasn’t.
Point taken. I have added a qualifier.
I downloaded it. I also use Organic Maps. It uses Open Street Map data. Doesn’t have lake names but still lists “Gulf of Mexico”. google can get bent.
If you’re using Organic, it’s worth considering Organic’s fork CoMaps, which was created by major contributors in response to these grievances.
I wasn’t aware of this. I’ll check out comaps. Thanks!
TIL there’s a MapQuest app.
I can’t find the MapQuest map in the Japanese App Store, and CoMaps doesn’t seem to have very many search results when looking for local spots here.
Anybody have a good recommendation for a map app in Japan that is more privacy-centric?
I’ve been wanting to ditch Google Maps for a long time.
Not sure about Japan specifically, but I use Here We Go. i have also found that Open Street Maps based maps don’t have enough info in my area.
Here We Go is sort of a legacy project, currently owned by several European car manufacturers, servers in the Netherlands, a good country for data privacy laws. Basically it costs money to operate a maps app, but it’s a rounding error for the type of money they make. Solid privacy policy. Closest in functionality to Google, using TrioAdvisor for discovery/reviews/pictures/business info. Solid at real time traffic. Built in buttons to run in offline mode and delete any data. You can save favorite locations without an account.
It’s not perfect though. Closed source. Can’t search along route in Android Auto mode, and when you do in normal mode it does not tell you how much time will be added to the trip. Voice assistant doesn’t work in Android auto (its no longer installed on my phone though). 2 trackers: Google Crashlytics & Facebook login. You can turn off telemetry in the app though, and not sign into Facebook obviously. You have to download it from Play Store specifically for Android Auto, not even Aurora Store, not even if you enable unknown sources for Android Auto.
I’ve been looking too but I can’t find any specific to Japan. I think you and I are gonna have to add every single spot in Japan.
Well, you can contribute to CoMaps to map your local area — it can actually be quite fun to just walk around and add businesses and the like. Kind of like some of the games that have you walk around and catch creatures in balls, except you map your local community, find new places and spots, and basically contribute meaningful stuff :)
