OpenStreetMap is leveraging the community to produce geographical data. In many parts of the world, this data is not free, and is subject to ownership by government agencies (this is not true in the USA, where it is free). OpenStreetMap lets users freely edit maps online in a wiki fashion, sharing their knowledge and experience of local geographies.

Currently, the project is focused on European geographics, where places like Dublin and Glasgow are actively being mapped by users. They’re still early in their development, so coverage won’t be as good as the standard maps out there, but they hope to increase coverage as the project moves along.

Maps are draggable via a Google Maps style interface, and editing is done using a Java engine. The interface is a bit clunky and slow at this point, which I hope they’ll be able to resolve in the future. Zooming in and out takes way too much time, which could deter people from making extensive edits.

A major question that many people ask is, why not use Google Maps instead? They explain the intricacies in their FAQ:

Most hackers around the world are familiar with the difference between “free as in beer” and “free as in speech”. Google Maps are free as in beer, not as in speech.

If your project’s mapping needs can be served simply by using the Google Maps API, all to the good. But that’s not true of every project. We need a free dataset which will enable programmers, social activists, cartographers and the like to fulfil [sic] their plans without being limited either by Google’s API or by their Terms of Service

So really, the OpenStreetMap project aims to go beyond any mapping service in terms of freedom of use. The real question then is, will there be enough map geeks out there who have the skills to do this? They do provide a service where users can upload points taken on a GPS, but I don’t think I’ll ever trust myself to freehand any roads on a map.

On the tails of Wikipedia, Wikitravel, and Rrove comes WikiMapia, which allows visitors to annotate, tag, and describe places directly on the Google map interface. It’s definitely a neat idea–instead of surfing Wikitravel to find a particular place via reading text, you can surf around an area of the map on WikiMapia and view descriptions of interesting locations.

Each location has a “card” that holds information about it. Users can choose to view the card, and edit it if they like. Like any good Wiki, each card also has the history of edits.

Currently, there doesn’t seem to be many places with in depth descriptions. In fact, I see a lot of the cards simply referencing the corresponding Wikipedia article. It would be worthwhile for WikiMapia to somehow get access to Wikipedia’s database (and location data), if possible, and simply grab the article and place it in the card description, if possible. That way, some of the information will already be filled in.

The useful case is when people start filling in locations that are interesting, but relatively unknown, like the hidden niches in cities, parks, and other areas. This is exactly what the blog Google Sightseeing is doing, except that WikiMapia could leverage the network effects of the Wiki system to find a whole slew of cool locations. After WikiMapia matures, they should aggregate the most interesting locations and report them on a blog or a front page, a bit like what del.icio.us has recently done with their front page redesign.

The UI for WikiMapia was a bit clunky for me. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m on a slower machine, but it took quite a while to get some of their UI elements working (even though Google Maps usually zips along on my machine). Their next step should be making the entry box and UI more user friendly, which will encourage people to submit more locations.

Good luck to the WikiMapia team, and keep working at their system. WikiMapia could turn out to be a great resource, especially if they open up their API.

[Thanks to Steve Rubel for the pointer]