Last Friday, I wrote a post about bicycle mapping, which inspired me to do a bit more research about it over the weekend. As I said, there are a lot of different mapping applications available online, most of which are focused around navigation and route-finding. Most of these online applications are available through large companies such as Google or Yahoo. However, there are some online mapping applications that are more open source.
One example of this is Open Street Map, which is a free and editable map of the whole world. The best thing about Open Street Map is that it is collaborative and interactive, so in many ways, it is much more up-to-date, dynamic, and user-friendly (especially for a cyclist), than say Google Maps, Map Quest, etc. Of course, there are trade-offs to using the different online mapping applications, but I really like the concept behind Open Street Maps.
Enjoy this short video excerpt from a presentation by Steve Coast of Open Street Map.