Online Collaboration Creates 'Map-Making For the Masses' 61
The Science Daily site has up a piece on the effect user-generated content can have on map-making. Scientists are appreciative of the data enthusiastic mappers can provide, updating maps on changes in local geographic information. "Goodchild's paper looks at volunteered geographic information as a special case of the more general Web phenomenon of user-generated content. It covers what motivates large numbers of individuals (often with little formal qualifications) to take part, what technology allows them to do so, how accurate the results are and what volunteered geographic information can add to more conventional sources of such information."
Re:screwmyminicity.com (Score:1, Interesting)
The biggest problem is it works, check myminicity.com on http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/myminicity.com [alexa.com] alexa. If this is encouraged it won't be long before you get 100's of these clowns drowning out all normal conversation. We've already lost usenet and email to spam, I'll be damned if linkspam is going to kill online fora, kill them while they're small. Set an example. I'm sure if the original inventors of spam email had their offices burned to the ground on day #2 of their enlightened campaign it would have set back the idea of mass mailings a couple of years.
Also,
Re:OpenStreetMap (Score:3, Interesting)
I love these guys. I live in Vanuatu, a tiny South Pacific country that so far has escaped the attention of the Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft map interfaces. The only way we're going to get decent maps of our towns is by doing it ourselves. Thanks to a few thoughtful people from Australia and the US, we now have a GPS and are mapping all the streets of Port Vila, the capital.
Few people have computer experience, but we managed to recruit a young man from a local NGO's youth project, and he's been spending the last few weeks riding around in a local mini-bus run by a family member of his. I've already uploaded some of the raw data, and with any luck we'll have some decent maps of the town before too long.
What I like best about Open Street Maps is that their format is compatible with Google Maps. This means that if the stars align themselves properly, we'll be on the map fairly soon.