18 December 2010

OpenStreetMap, MapQuest and BingMaps

During the State of the Map 2010 in Girona, MapQuest announced that they will start supporting OpenStreetMap as well as using the open-source map in their portals. The recent opening of the US portal (http://open.mapquest.com/) completes the previous European versions (http://open.mapquest.fr/ for example).


The interesting point is thatMapQuest also provides an API to integrate some OpenStreetMap magic in your applications as well as a new version of the OpenStreetMap Potlach editor :



The latest big news came from Microsoft which has allowed access to its BingMaps aerial imagery in OpenStreetMap editors (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing). This will allow to create new open-source content over places that needs mapping but where fewer mappers are active.

This interesting application provides information about the date of each image at various zoom level of the BingMaps content : http://mvexel.dev.openstreetmap.org/bing/

The final point about all this is the integration of BingMaps (including IGN and DigitalGlobe imagery) in a new version of Potlatch edited by MapQuest enabling volunteers to update the OpenStreetMap data :  http://open.mapquestapi.com/dataedit/index_flash.html?lat=43.5532223109707&lon=1.48675752408545


Pretty cool and showing an interesting convergence between commercial companies and the open source community :-)

08 December 2010

The Story of Electronics

The Story of Electronics, released on November 9th, 2010 takes on the electronics industry’s “design for the dump” mentality and champions product take back to spur companies to make less toxic, more easily recyclable and longer lasting products.