Gmap Pedometer Mileposts

[paul]

Open Street Map is a project that collects and maintains mapping data. People all over the world can use GPS devices or software to record accurate mapping data, then that data can be used any application requiring GIS data for free.

It may sound similar to what Google does with their mapping data -- replace "people all over the world" with "companies Google licenses data from" and it's all the same, right? However, there is an important difference. If you find an error on the Google map data, your remedy is to contact Google, who passes the error report on to whoever they license the data from, who may or may not fix it. If you find an error in the Open Street Map data, you go in and fix it yourself!

If you see an error in a map on the OSM overlay, go to the main page for the Open Street Map project, and you will find a map much like the one on this page. That map will have an "edit" tab, and there is where you can make changes to the map. The learning curve for making changes is non-trivial, but your work will benefit everyone who uses the map your neighborhood after you. Changes you make will take a week or so to show up in the OSM overlay on www.gmap-pedometer.com.

Creating map tiles for the entire world requires a whole lot of disk space. The team at Cloudmade has created a free API this site is using to serve these tiles, and hats off to them.