Suitcase-Sized Drones Extend And Deepen OpenStreetMap's Coverage

An increasing number of online services use location information. This places suppliers like Google, with its Google Maps, in a strong position, since creating such geodata for entire countries -- or the world -- is something that can only be undertaken by large, well-funded companies. At least, that was true in the past, but increasingly the free, crowd-sourced alternative, OpenStreetMap, is gaining both contributors and commercial users: 

On Techdirt.

Putting China on the Innovation Map

Rather patronisingly, the West has tended to regard China as little better than a copy-cat in advanced technologies, not least on the Web. That's been fuelled in part by the tendency of Chinese companies to create clones of Western Net companies without even changing the design.

But there's definitely a new wave of innovation coming through, although it's hard for those who don't read Chinese to follow this. But one example that is accessible to everyone is the site O.cn.

That's because it's a mapping site - here's Beijing - and hence highly visual, but rather different to Google Maps because it uses an axonometric projection, which makes it look a little bit like SimCity. Paradoxically, this makes it easier to grasp the lay of the land. Moreover, many individual buildings are named (in Chinese, of course), provided a handy level of detail, and you can also pull out categories like food or entertainment.

All-in-all, its an impressive site, and one that really puts Western rivals in the shade. Expect to see this happening more and more.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner...

...and a geek to boot, that I love these kind of things:

We've taken a selection of maps featured in the London: A Life in Maps exhibition and converted them into a Google Earth layer.

(Via Ogle Earth.)

Where in the World Are...OSS Companies?

If you've ever wondered where all these new and not-so-new open source companies are based, but can't be bothered looking them all up online, here's a nice mashup that shows the physical location of many of them. All we need now is a similar map for all the coders.... (Via Matthew Aslett.)