Open alternatives to Google-maps? [closed] - google-maps

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I'm looking for an alternative to Google-maps with all the richness of their API but more open. Does such a thing exist?

OpenStreetMap is, of course, the obvious answer. There are various APIs for managing the data in the database, and there are various APIs for getting maps onto your webpages, such as OpenLayers, Mapstraction, or Staticmaps.

Google have recently introduced a limit of 25,000 map sessions per day, which forced us to consider the alternatives for some of our sites.
We've written a blog post about it with some examples here.
In a nutshell, we have chosen to use a combination of CloudMade's Leaflet for the Javascript Map API, and then Open MapQuest (based on OpenStreetMap data) for the tiles.

You might want to consider http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/

OpenLayers
About...
OpenLayers makes it easy to put a dynamic map in any web page. It can display map tiles and markers loaded from any source. MetaCarta developed the initial version of OpenLayers and gave it to the public to further the use of geographic information of all kinds. OpenLayers is completely free, Open Source JavaScript, released under a BSD-style License.

If you are in the UK you can use the Ordance Surveys' OS Open Data maps.

Consider this article: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/takecontrolofyourmaps
Here are a few options suggested by the article:
1-OpenLayers
2-TileCache
3-Mapnik
4-QGIS
The article explains (theoretically) how to create your own software stack that will mimic google maps, but remain under your complete control.
You might not need all the layers of software for your project, but you may find the article helpful regardless.

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Is there a better solution than google speech-api? [closed]

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I'm working on Sbire which use google speech-api. There is a some things which I don't like with this api.
First, this is not in streaming mode. It receive small audio files but there is no real pipes.
Secondly, it's not precise. Google does not record our voice to learn our accent. I think it's very important to have a good quality of recognition.
I'm looking for a free api or an open-source tool.
Actually there is a streaming mode, but it requires an API key. Here is an example of how to use it: http://mikepultz.com/2013/07/google-speech-api-full-duplex-php-version/
If you want something that learns, you'll need to create a neural network to handle the data. The best open source tool, however, is CMUSphinx or pocketSphinx(a mini version of CMUSphinx). Here is a link to that tool: http://sourceforge.net/p/cmusphinx/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/
The best part of CMU-Sphinx, however, is that you can set a dictionary of keywords. Instead of outputting gibberish, you can have it ONLY output those commands and finds the command closest to what it thinks you are saying. This make speech recognition incredibly accurate, but only work for a small set of words.

Is there an API for receipt reading? [closed]

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I had an idea for my first mobile application and I was thinking of making it in HTML5 + Jquery Mobile. The core functionality is:
to be able to take a picture of a receipt
digitize all the information.
I've never made a mobile app before and I'm not sure if this is possible. If there is no API available, how would I go about rolling my own receipt reader? Thanks! Please let me know if I am being stupid.
Edit: I found a service that lets me use their application to take a picture(or e-mail the picture) of the receipt and have it extract the necessary information. http://www.proongo.com/b/receipt-reading.php. I'm not exactly sure how to use this service but I will do more research tomorrow and share with you what I find.
I found an OCR API service with a number of different pay-per business models called OCRAPISERVICE. They have a number of examples hosted on github using various mobileOSs through PhoneGap. They do have a free-trial model that lets you submit 100 requests.
I guess you need to apply OCR for software solution with a function of recognizing supermarket receipts. There are many open source OCR solutions like Tesseract and others. However, they are targeted to general OCR. Therefore, you have to use some additional tools for recognizing receipts via a mobile app.
Recently we have worked on the web-based app for receipt recognition. Here you may find some details of the research: http://rnd.azoft.com/applying-ocr-technology-receipt-recognition/
Besides Tesseract, all the big boys: Google, Microsoft and IBM have now got their own offering of OCR APIs. These APIs provide simple image-to-text OCR scan with various degree of accuracy. I find Google Vision to be the most accurate for pictures of a receipt. You would still need to extract the data out of the half-garbage text though.
If you want an API that returns field metadata like: total amount, tax amount, date and merchant information, where you apps can consume directly. Check out https://www.taggun.io. I've built the APIs specifically for this purpose.

Google Distance Matrix API Alternatives? [closed]

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Can you recommend alternatives for the Google Distance Matrix API?
This service is great but has some serious quota limitations and the Terms of use are also pretty tough.
Thanks!
MapQuest RouteMatrix is pretty much the same thing: http://www.mapquestapi.com/directions/
Bing's Route Data API may be an alternative you can consider - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff701718.aspx
I'm not sure if they have the same functionality, but DeCarta ( http://www.decarta.com/ ) has some nice map API stuff for routing / display.
Otherwise you could go for open source stuff like PostGIS with OpenStreetMaps or openrouteservice ( http://openrouteservice.org/ ) there are routing libraries, although I haven't used them extensively myself, so I'm not sure what they have to offer.
Many developers have been able to do this with the Bing Maps REST routing service http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff701705.aspx. It requires a bit more development but works well. Here is an example: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Bing-Maps-trip-optimizer-c4e037f7
The GraphHopper Directions API includes a Matrix API. Based on OSM data and very fast. Comes with a JS demo and a Java client. Note: I'm the author.
Also we allow all use cases.
Traveltimeplatform. Just named differently - http://docs.traveltimeplatform.com/reference/time-filter/

Alternatives to Google Earth for sat image [closed]

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I've been asked to add Google Earth images to a desktop app (civil engineering modelling app)
I was under the impression that Google's license didn't allow you to do this.
Are there any other easily accessible, and similarly high resolution, image sources anyone can recommend (Blue Marble, terraserver) ?
As a bonus, any library that lets me use coordinates in a range of local map datums and convert them to Lat/Long without me having to incorporate the whole of CGAL?
You may want to check out NASA WorldWind. It is a Java SDK that you can integrate into either a desktop app or an applet. It allows you to access and visualize several freely-available satellite imagery sources, and is open source so it's completely customizable.
In addition, WorldWind has quite a bit of functionality that supports working with various coordinate systems, so it may be able to handle the coordinate transformations that you asked about.
Check out NASA World Wind.
Ideally I wanted a c++ sdk or web interface.
But I found this Ossimplanet which uses the Worldwind server.
ESRI made it easy to get up and running using ArcGIS Online. They have free map services for satellite imagery, which you reference via a URL and their Javascript API.
Check out their World Imagery online tutorial, which has code you can cut and paste to get up and running quickly, or just click "View Live Sample" to see a demo.
As for the bonus question: maybe try something like GDAL/Proj/Geos (the ogr2ogr utility may help).

What Significant Google Products Are Open Source? [closed]

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I know that Google does some open source but a lot of their assets are very closed source. What are the main ones that are open source and those not?
Android - fully open (I think)
GMail - Closed
Search - Obviously closed
Chrome - Some open source bits (webkit)... but I'm not sure
JavaScript compilers (that Steve Yegge is working with)
Youtube - Closed
Feedburner - Closed Blogger - Closed
I am struggling to come up with big pro-OSS products from Google.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google employee, and therefore obviously biased :)
Have a look at this page for a fairly large list of our open source APIs and projects. (I'm particularly involved in Protocol Buffers and the C# port.)
Other things to consider off the top of my head, some of which are no doubt on that list:
Google Java collections
GWT (Google Web Toolkit)
Wave (in the future)
You might also consider code.google.com to be a "pro-OSS product" in its own right.
Chrome is entirely open-source, as Chromium.
Google CTemplate, a templating library for C++.
http://code.google.com/p/zxing/ ZXing multi-format 1D/2D barcode image processing library implemented in Java. Possibly it's not the main one and not the highest quality but I've found it useful and open-source as opposed to most other such libraries.
Jaiku, as of recenty.