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Bing Boosts Open Street Maps

In its latest bid to beat Google at its own game, Bing just added a new layer to its Maps data. "The new layer is from Open Street Maps, a free editable map of the whole world," Search Engine Land explains. "This layer is a lot like the Wikipedia concept, where anyone can 'view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth.'"

As Bing Maps Technical Evangelist Chris Pendleton explains: "People, like you and me, gather location data across the globe from a variety of sources such as recordings from GPS devices, from free satellite imagery or simply from knowing an area very well, for example because they live there. This information then gets uploaded to OpenStreetMap's central database from where it can be further modified, corrected and enriched by anyone who notices missing facts or errors about the area." Thanks to its thousands of editors, Open Street Map has been applauded for being more detailed than maps offered by Google. Presently, it has more than 250,000 registered contributors.

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