OpenStreetMap
I just saw a very interesting demo by Steve Coast of OpenStreetMap, a free, editable map of the world. The OSM site hosts an open wiki, so anybody can contribute.
There’s a growing community of OSM users who constantly “trace” routes they take by car, bike or foot. Users tag points on their routes, and share the resulting maps with other users. This builds a database of geotagged maps. Steve showed a quote by Tim-Berners Lee in which he called OSM a “grassroots remapping of the world.” That’s pretty much true, but the data collected by OpenStreetMap so far is mostly centered around the U.K. and Western Europe, since that’s where the project is based.
The OSM maps can be viewed by any browser, but they become especially useful on GPS-enabled handheld devices. There are a few applications available that can display real world images and user-aggregated tags as you move around on a map. OSM users also share information about best routes, slope gradient (great for bikes!) and auto tolls.
It’s also a useful tool for people who live in remote locations in Africa, Eastern Europe or on small islands — places where map data is non-existant, incomplete or incorrect.
One of the projects Steve is working on is Mapstraction.com. It’s a JavaScript library that lets you switch between the different map APIs with only one line of code. Programmers can serve data from Yahoo Maps and Google Maps in one UI using their library.
