Crowds create Wikipedia-style maps of the world

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_THE_MAPPING_CROWD?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-03-19-11-59-55

OpenStreetMap is another effort founded on the same belief but more closely follows the nonprofit Wikipedia model. Like Wikipedia, the volunteer-written online encyclopedia, anyone can go to the OpenStreetMap website and add or edit information. And anyone can use the maps - to find their way or to build their own map-based apps - for free.

Conceived in the U.K. in the early 2000s by a lone British programmer, the service has since grown to a half-million registered mappers, including 16,000 heavily active contributors, according to the organization's wiki. Especially popular in Britain and Germany, OpenStreetMap is built by users who trace their travels on GPS units then connect the dots to draw highways, streets and hiking trails on digital maps. Volunteer trekkers worldwide have logged more than 2.7 billion such GPS points on the map so far.