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This is not really a new way to do stuff, and as several other has pointed out, the EXIF-standard already has fields for geographical placement. A new dimension is provided in the data, and allows us to do a whole new range of applications. We've built a small application on Symbian OS (currently running under Personal Java, and another solution in development running under Symbian OS natively) which tags images, audio and other information on a cellular phone (we use the Ericsson P900) with location (provided by an gps with a bluetooth interface).

We've done several interesting projects in relevance to this, and the probably biggest field of usage would be the utility and maintenance industry.

We're currently submitting the data from the phone, tagged with a location or a track, to a Java-based server. This server can in turn store the data locally to be retrieved from another phone with additional information (like a regular map) and/or pass the data on to a webserver where the repository can be browsed from a normal web browser. The application may be tested on The OneMap GeoMeta Browser Client. This is part of Project OneMap, a project where we aim to build a completly free and freely managed geodata repository.

There is still much work going on in this field, but the japanese are 2 years ahead of everyone else. Several of their phones already have built in GPS-receivers and tag the images they capture automagically (this was done as early as in 2002). There still isn't any regular consumer interest for this in Europe or the US, but we could all hope for a better future. :)

This is not really a new way to do stuff, and as several other has pointed out, the EXIF-standard already has fields for geographical placement. A new dimension is provided in the data, and allows us to do a whole new range of applications. We've built a small application on Symbian OS (currently running under Personal Java, and another solution in development running under Symbian OS natively) which tags images, audio and other information on a cellular phone (we use the Ericsson P900) with location (provided by an gps with a bluetooth interface).

We've done several interesting projects in relevance to this, and the probably biggest field of usage would be the utility and maintenance industry.

We're currently submitting the data from the phone, tagged with a location or a track, to a Java-based server. This server can in turn store the data locally to be retrieved from another phone with additional information (like a regular map) and/or pass the data on to a webserver where the repository can be browsed from a normal web browser. The application may be tested on The OneMap GeoMeta Browser Client. This is part of Project OneMap, a project where we aim to build a completly free and freely managed geodata repository.

There is still much work going on in this field, but the japanese are 2 years ahead of everyone else. Several of their phones already have built in GPS-receivers and tag the images they capture automagically (this was done as early as in 2002). There still isn't any regular consumer interest for this in Europe or the US, but we could all hope for a better future. :)

You should consider yourself lucky. Most of the information you need is already avaiable to you, in the public domain. As several other has mentioned, the Tiger-files will provide loads of information and you should really have a look at those (to convert them into your own format). It took a few weeks to do it, but the task is far from impossible.

The other question asked is however much more important, what about completly open maps in a free for all use setting? As i mentioned, this is the case for the US, but quite far from the truth for some other countries in the world :| If you're going to let other people use your data, please provide them in an open and accesible format, like WFS. Have a look at GeoServer and PostGIS (for PostgreSQL) or do as we do, store everything as GML - an open standard presented by OpenGIS (which also stands behind WFS and WMS). Take a look at their website which features quite a few important standards and other resources.

Making data available as WMS or WFS allows other people to seamlessly integrate them into their own applications. Seeing an application just importing more and more information thats available by WMS is simply amazing. The norwegian rescue service uses an internal WMS-server for all their mapping data, which provides information about currents, weather, available ships in some parts of the world that supports the system and loads of other information. This comes from several different sources and are integrated into the application on the last step. All the seperate units are responsible for their own mapping data and can upgrade and improve their data at any time without any interaction from the end user.

We export information by WFS, although probably not very interesting for your use, it demonstrates the possibilities. You may browse our repository at OneMap by using our SVG client.

You should consider yourself lucky. Most of the information you need is already avaiable to you, in the public domain. As several other has mentioned, the Tiger-files will provide loads of information and you should really have a look at those (to convert them into your own format). It took a few weeks to do it, but the task is far from impossible.

The other question asked is however much more important, what about completly open maps in a free for all use setting? As i mentioned, this is the case for the US, but quite far from the truth for some other countries in the world :| If you're going to let other people use your data, please provide them in an open and accesible format, like WFS. Have a look at GeoServer and PostGIS (for PostgreSQL) or do as we do, store everything as GML - an open standard presented by OpenGIS (which also stands behind WFS and WMS). Take a look at their website which features quite a few important standards and other resources.

Making data available as WMS or WFS allows other people to seamlessly integrate them into their own applications. Seeing an application just importing more and more information thats available by WMS is simply amazing. The norwegian rescue service uses an internal WMS-server for all their mapping data, which provides information about currents, weather, available ships in some parts of the world that supports the system and loads of other information. This comes from several different sources and are integrated into the application on the last step. All the seperate units are responsible for their own mapping data and can upgrade and improve their data at any time without any interaction from the end user.

We export information by WFS, although probably not very interesting for your use, it demonstrates the possibilities. You may browse our repository at OneMap by using our SVG client.

We've already done a bit of work on this, although not in any open projects yet. We do however have a small testbed for integrating and designing datasets in a SVG-client before going through a peer review process by others that have data in the same area.

Our white paper on the architecture may be seen at SVG Open from the 2003 proceedings. A small amount of information (including a live demo -- it does however require that someone accepts the data submitted, so don't expect to see anything in the gateway at once) is available here.

The idea is however a good one and is absolutely doable. The problem is that you'll probably get rather large datasets for the most used paths, while the roads noone travels frequently will remain unmapped (and those are really the roads that you _do_ need a map for)..

There is one more, alive and kicking: OneMap.

This is exactly what we've implemented in OneMap, but there are several other issues that you have to resolve in such a setting. There may be inconsistencies between the two sets, their representation may be different etc. You'll never get a perfect map, so in many cases you're interested in getting "parts" of both. In addition, you have to have some sort of technique to handle overlapping sections.

We've described this to some extent in our papers.

We're already way ahead of you. I'm one of the developers at project OneMap. We are currently building and serving one of the largest, free repositories in the world, completly built on open standards. We serve content in the fashion of GML and store everything internally as XML. We've integrated quite a few sources so far, both from a few custom norwegian sources and from the US TigerLine-files.

The main goal is to be able to update and review the content of our repository from within your own browser -- and we have the infrastructure to solve this. The biggest problem being that no-one has ever done anything like this in such a large scale, so we're kinda going along and feeling how the ground is all the way.

Our gateway (for viewing the maps) are currently built on SVG and utilizes the open, formatted GML response. The source is going to be opened up and everything is going to be available for free, but currently we're having a few issues we would like to solve before going public. As always, this is a work in progress. I'm probably doing my MSc with just this topic (updating a map by many individuals) and a way of making sure that only REAL changes go into the repository.