Friday, December 01, 2006

OpenStreetMap is so cool

For some reason I love maps and aerial photos, so naturally I love OpenStreetMap!

If you don't know what OpenStreetMap is about, its essentially a project to create "Open Source" (actually a Creative Commons license) maps for the UK (because the real ones are copyrighted and cost loads to use!) and the rest of the world using a load of volunteers wandering around the country with GPS units. Sounds like it might be crap but check out this image of London generated a few months ago:


Pretty cool huh? Obviously there are big areas without any data, but the potential is there! At the moment one of the main guys in the project is doing a community-sponsored week of full time work on the project so there is a lot of activity going on, so go and check out the progress.

I liked the whole concept so much I even donated some money...lets just hope I don't regret giving the money away in a year or two if it ends up like the stupid mess that Wikipedia has become!