Sunday, September 28, 2008

If you dont do it, the world will. Openstreetmap

Quite a few years ago I happened to explain to someone at a mapping agency that whilst I understood they had spent money and time creating mapping assets, and that cartography, rather like writing has been the preserve of a few with impact on many, that they really should prepare for the web and people just doing it for themselves.
Now with so many GPS enabled devices, and the whole web as a platform Web2.0 rise we start to see more things like this open source map of the world. We create the small bits of map that we need, in return for the small bits of maps other have created. Small is a relative term of course, as this is a fractal small, a self repeating pattern.
I checked out Openstreetmap, and my street (like on many of the main maps) is not there. Now of course I can plot it and add it and make this mapping more accurate than much of the paid for ones.

View Larger Map
This interest me on several levels, not least for having a world map which we will augment with data and images en masse. So, is your street on there?

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