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FIGURE 3.11 OpenStreetMap (2010): Warsash in Hampshire, England. (© OpenStreetMap
contributors, CC BY-SA. http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright )
phones. The last meant that location-aware applications could be developed and GI
and information about a user's current location delivered to the user on the move. The
result has meant that social networking applications such as Twitter can be more loca-
tion aware, and users are able say where they are “tweeting” from. Users also started
to geocode their content; for example, many Flickr photographs are now geocoded.
Geographic mashups exploit the availability of detailed and free mapping. But, free
mapping was a problem. Where good quality and detailed mapping existed, such as in
Great Britain, as provided by Ordnance Survey, it was not free; in countries such as the
United States, where government mapping was free, it tended not to be as detailed or
as current as in countries where there was a fee charged for map content. In the United
Kingdom, a project called OpenStreetMap arose out of this frustration; the aim was to
create detailed mapping by voluntary means. Formed in 2004, OpenStreetMap has
since attracted tens of thousands of members not only in the United Kingdom but also
worldwide. The map is created by members either submitting GPS tracks of where they
have been or through digitizing Yahoo! Imagery and other free sources (Figure 3.11).
OpenStreetMap was not the first community-based project to aim at capturing GI data:
GeoNames, for example, is attempting to construct a world gazetteer of places, and of
course many of the entries in Wikipedia (itself an inspiration for OpenStreetMap) are
geographic in nature. The availability of GPS combined with smart phones has also
generated new types of social applications, such as Foursquare, which is specifically
tailored to providing friends with location information.
All this is not happening just within one community of people; rather, it is many
different communities, each with their own aims, motivations, and preferences. But,
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