Geowebbing

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Description

... of the emergence of the Geowebbing industry, by Marius Chitosca:

"companies have created tools that are allowing people with minimal technical skills to do what only professional mapmakers were able to do before.” And that was the birth of Geowebbing industry, the child of a collaborative effort between web companies and citizens with a passion for mapping.

Amateur mapping is about “drawing on digital maps and annotating them with text, images, sound and videos,” “collectively creating a new kind of atlas that is likely to be both richer and messier than any other.” It’s a simple revolutionary process of selecting, adding and communicating information (as said by Matthew H. Edney, director of the History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin in Madison). It’s Geotagging, associating information, pictures and media content with pinpoints on the maps. It’s merging maps and blending outside sources to obtain “mash-ups.” It’s a wikipedian process of collective knowledge with millions of contributors.

This new way of mapping, with multiple layers of information about a specific location is also turning the Web into a medium where maps will play a more central role in how information is organized and found. Like in any other initiatives on the Web these days, smart mobs are taking charge over areas unexplored by the conventional services, agencies and institutions, filling in the interstitial spaces in the mapping body, empty spots that the official cartography services have missed, especially on the levels of localized and specific information. Amateur cartography on the Web can update all the new information and also personalize its organizing process and output." (http://www.smartmobs.com/2007/07/30/from-mappomania-to-mappopedia-the-fruit-of-competitive-web-mapping-services-and-amateur-cartographic-work/)