[Talk-us] Uploading all Post Office Drop Box locations in

[Ian Dees]

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 2:53 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> POIs are
> extraordinarily easy to survey, anyone with a decent mobile gadget can
> do it. Use it as an opportunity to get people interested!
>
> (Maybe you can elicit from USPS the *number* of drop boxes in a given
> area, so you have an idea about how complete OSM is. You can even make a
> game of hunting down the last missing drop boxes...)
>

Frederik's always much better at making this point than anyone else I think.

I think OSM could probably get a lot of data by issuing challenges to
targeted organizations to map some specific category as thoroughly as
possible. Something like the links I sent earlier (both are asking people to
map their USPS drop boxes -- one even has an iPhone app already), but where
the data ends up being usable.

There are tons of websites whose niche is to get people to map something as
thoroughly as possible so others can download the files and stick them on
their satnav units (e.g. http://www.poi-factory.com/). Imagine if OSM was
used as the base for that, with extracts provided for particular
subprojects. Leader boards ("@iandees added 12 new Burger Kings last week!")
would be useful to get people competing over the number of POI they enter...

If only there was more time, things like this could be done!
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