Diablog

Flickr is best known for its photo-sharing, but increasingly its most innovative work is coming from its geo-developers (Radar post). Yesterday they announced the addition of a street-level map of Black Rock City so that we can view geotagged Burning Man photos. Flickr got the mapping data via Open Street Map's collaboration with Burning Man.

Flickr uses Yahoo! Maps for most of their mapping (and fine maps they are). The underlying data for them is primarily provided by NAVTEQ. NAVTEQ's process can take months to update their customers' mapping data servers. For a city like Burning Man that only exists for a week every year that process won't work. However, an open data project like Open Street Map can map that type of city.