[OSM-talk] 'Mashups' using OSM

[Nick Whitelegg]

Hello everyone,

Was wondering what the prevailing thought on 'mash up' applications using 
OSM was. To give an example: for Freemap I would like to use a planet.osm 
derived OSM map, displayed with OpenLayers, as the background and then 
allow users (walkers, cyclists) to annotate the map with path blockages, 
interesting views, links to photos, etc. These annotations could be either 
public or private (requiring a login to be visible, e.g. something only 
relevant to members of a club). Annotations would come with descriptions.

The question I have is - where should those annotations be stored? In view 
of the (sensible) focus on the OSM server itself for editing rather than 
retrieval, it's my view that individual 'mashup' sites would store these 
annotations in their own databases, not in OSM. Any comments on this?

Nick