Bigbro's foray into the scary world of blogging
An international team of citizen cartographers is preparing to descend on Limerick, Ireland, in what has been called a 'mapping revolution.'
Open Streetmap.org's second annual gathering will take place in the Kilmurry Lodge Hotel on the 12th and 13th July. The project groups over 40,000 volunteers who - armed with GPS receivers, bikes and notebooks - are surveying the streets, footpaths, peaks and rivers of the world. Anyone can contribute and anyone can use the resulting map.
Often compared to Wikipedia, Open Streetmap differs from traditional internet maps in its depth of coverage (others are restricted to just streets) and its open philosophy.
Anyone can download the Open Streetmap data and make their own map from it - one popular example being a unique webmap of worldwide cycle routes, where bike-friendly roads are emphasised and motorways toned down. By contrast, other maps are covered by restrictive copyright rules, such as those produced by Ordnance Survey of Ireland or by Google.
Registration for the conference is open, with further information available from www.stateofthemap.org or www.openstreetmap.org.
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