Because I don't think a lot of people know about it, I'll mention pelias here. If you have 16 GB RAM and 600 GB of disk, you can have a free, open source, pre-populated geo database that covers the entire planet.<p><a href="https://github.com/pelias/pelias" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/pelias/pelias</a><p>Pelias does geocoding (turns addresses, POIs, and administrative regions into coordinates), reverse geocoding (given coordinates, finds nearby POIs, addresses, neighborhood, city, county, state, country), full-text search, and autocompletion. You can also import CSV to use your own custom data.<p>I run it on an extra PC, where it powers about 20 twitter bots that turn lat/lon coordinates of aircraft into descriptions like "flying over Silver Lake, Los Angeles, 0.5 miles from Circus Liquor."<p>There are docker configs for the whole-planet DB as well as various countries or metro areas if you don't need the whole Earth. <a href="https://github.com/pelias/docker/tree/master/projects" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/pelias/docker/tree/master/projects</a>
Sorry for posting a second comment, but this just occurred to me:<p>Mapbox serves all of its customers’ vector tiles through AWS CloudFront.<p>Is this a possible case of Amazon seeing Mapbox’s traffic numbers, being able to estimate revenue based on pricing/the number of average tiles loaded per map session, and deciding that it was worth to take a plunge?<p>(There might have been other factors too but — was this /not/ a factor?)<p>To be very (... paranoid doesn’t feel like the right word), wouldn’t Amazon also have info in the same way on Mapbox’s largest customers and know who to pursue/target first for their new service?
Based on the recent license change by Mapbox[0], it means that Amazon Location's tutorial[1] suggesting to use Mapbox GL JS should be updated, right?<p>i.e. using Amazon Location with the v2 Mapbox GL JS would also require paying Mapbox for every map load, or you'd need to use the pre v2 version (the last "Open Source one") of the Mapbox GL JS library, correct?<p>EDIT: as pointed by @kylebarron below, Amazon specifically mentions "Amazon Location supports open source versions of Mapbox GL JS (v1.13.0 or earlier)." [2] which is the last Open Source version.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25347310" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25347310</a><p>[1] <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/location/latest/developerguide/tutorial-mapbox-gl-js.html" rel="nofollow">https://docs.aws.amazon.com/location/latest/developerguide/t...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/location/latest/developerguide/tutorial-mapbox-gl-js.html#tutorial-mapbox-js-add-dependencies" rel="nofollow">https://docs.aws.amazon.com/location/latest/developerguide/t...</a>
Always great to have an alternative to Google but I'd encourage anyone to have a look at Leaflet.js which is a great free alternative and doesn't take much JS knowledge to get up and running<p>Edited to say: and of course it runs on OpenStreetMaps
I wonder if this is related to the recent shift of mapbox away from OSS. Was on page 1 in the last week.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25347310" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25347310</a>
If you're looking for a simple, polished, developer-friendly alternative, check out Radar (<a href="https://radar.io" rel="nofollow">https://radar.io</a>). Think Twilio/Braze/Amplitude/Segment/Radar vs. SNS/Pinpoint/EventBridge/Location Service.
> You can choose between maps and map styles provided by Esri and by HERE Technologies,<p>I wonder why not use the HERE or Esri APIs directly?
Is this just a marketing gimmick so Amazon can complete their offering?<p><a href="https://developer.here.com/" rel="nofollow">https://developer.here.com/</a>
Honestly, I'm surprised that Amazon hasn't done this sooner. Google and to a lesser extent Apple both have a huge lead in this space. Amazon is one of the few companies that can afford the massive capital cost to create this kind of service.<p>I am curious about the quality though. It seems like they're just reselling from 3rd party data providers. Hopefully, we see this forcing price cuts to Google's Maps API at some point, but I think it will be a while until they reach parity in data quality.
I've read through all the docs and it is unclear if aerial imagery is supported. I just launched a JavaScript 3D mapping library (<a href="https://github.com/felixpalmer/procedural-gl-js" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/felixpalmer/procedural-gl-js</a>) and would be up for trying it out if it were supported.<p>Also interesting to see them use Mapbox as an example of an open source library that can be used with this. They obviously haven't been paying attention this past week.
"Until now, doing this has been somewhat complex and expensive, and also tied you to the business and programming models of a single provider."<p>Um.. It ties you to AWS as the single provider of this API.<p>I look forward to taking a look at it.
Other products I have used were complex.
Pricing here: <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/location/pricing/" rel="nofollow">https://aws.amazon.com/location/pricing/</a><p>Scroll down to see it.<p>No idea why Amazon always hides their service pricing on completely different pages.
Jeff,<p>Excited to try this out, but it would be great if AWS could also support GIS libraries on Amazon Linux 2. C.f.: <a href="https://github.com/aws/elastic-beanstalk-roadmap/issues/28" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/aws/elastic-beanstalk-roadmap/issues/28</a><p>Without this feature, AWS is basically only enabling half of what's needed to build location-based apps.
AWS has been tip-toeing into the maps space for a few years with their hosted GIS data.<p>They have the infrastructure to create a very compelling imagery dataset from their combination of Amazon Air, and Amazon Prime Air (drone delivery).<p>Google flies planes to capture cities for Google Earth, but none of the other mapping companies are regularly capturing this data as part of their everyday business.<p>I know someone is going to say "yeah, but you have to fly vertical and horizontal paths across cities to capture all the data", but I think that is a current limitation which will be resolved with large amounts of data and ML/AI.
Now I can say I'd rather have ALS than use Google Maps.<p>Joking aside, this is cool, pricing is good. Hopefully the mobile SDK provides more features than Google Maps'.
why nobody use openstreetmap ?<p>I was always wondering why google concurrent don't use OSM, the quality is better than here and they would benefit a lot from OSM to compete against google.<p>I don't understand why microsoft doesn't use OSM for bing map to replace their shitty map and why facebook doesn't use OSM to display map.
This is great but I really hope they get into the more popular uses like IP to location, autocomplete, etc APIs. There’s tons of small providers and some big ones out there that do this but it seems like an easy add for Amazon to do.
To me this is clear indicator that Amazon itself is entering the transport business, like the company has also already stated.<p>Geofencing, tracking and location is of course key to their own delivery services they are building.<p>I would be very interested in this if i was still in the transportation and shipping business
Not sure how well it compares to Azure Maps <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-maps/" rel="nofollow">https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-maps/</a>