http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/happy-national-geography-week/

A New Way to Use GPS

You probably know about GPS devices—maybe you even let one guide you to new destinations. But you can also use many GPS devices to gather data for Wiki maps at OpenStreetMap.org. Have students travel around their home area, gathering map data. Help them upload their data to the Web site.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/nov/19/digital-media-aol-foursquare-local-news-patch-peer
AOL sees revenues in local: Its CEO, Tim Armstrong, announced yesterday in New York that it plans to digitize entire towns with the help of Patch, the hyperlocal network it bought last year. Armstrong clearly sees a hole in the market here and plans to cover every aspect of community life from school boards to restaurants and shops. "We're hiring reporters," Armstrong said according to the business journal Portfolio.com. "Can you imagine that?"

Patch just switched to OpenStreetMap and appears to be busy with building its own map infrastructure, including designing, rendering and hosting its own tiles, according to zdnet. But that is not all. "Patch will go into stores, photograph everything and even tell consumers how many parking spaces there are," Armstrong said. "Even though it will have only 30 local communities outside New York City initially, it will scale substantially."

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=3206875

CloudMade is gearing up to release a set of tools that will enable people to quickly and easily contribute to the OpenStreetMap project.
At the same time the company is looking to create a developer model that will enable developers to use OpenStreetMap data and databases in their websites and iPhone applications.

"There are really two sides to this, there's a community facing side called Mapzen and a developer platform," said Nick Black, Founder of CloudMade.