TomTom announced a new feature called MapShare on Wednesday. It allows drivers to capture changes in the road attributes that aren't reflected in the map data. The first look at what it is can be seen in the GPSPassion Forums including some screen shots of the UI. The press release has a lot of marketing-speak but the screen shots give a clue what they're doing. Drivers can edit map attributes and POI's but not road geometry. So it's not exactly OpenStreetMaps but it's a very interesting start. More interesting would be what TomTom will do with the data and the extent to which they will share the changes with the map data suppliers. I suspect they won't but that leaves the issue of who will validate the changes. That's a massive effort that TeleAtlas and NAVTEQ do very well. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
It's another step in bringing customers what they've been saying they want for a long time: up-to-date maps. Kudos to TomTom for this innovation.

Adena blogged the AP story about the response of mapping sites in re-routing around the Bay Area's recent road relocation caused by a tanker truck fire. I thought I'd add a comment from the front, both geographically (since I'm in the Bay Area) as well as from the perspective of a company that supports a lot of location platforms that do routing.
One issue has been how to re-route motorists. A routing engine uses an algorithm to minimize road segment cost elements to calculate routes. However, in a case like this, the correct re-route isn't calculated by an algorithm; it's done by an official at the local road authority. That route is chosen to minimize impact on the surrounding community, is optimized to handle the traffic (within the limits of practicality...I hear it ain't pretty) and supported by local signage, traffic cops, etc. With something like 5,000 cars an hour dumping onto surface streets at rush hour, what they really don't want is for everyone (drivers or portals) to roll their own re-route. So routing engines need to be tuned to deliver the route approved by CalTrans, not just what seems best. And then you have to be sure you don't break anything else.
The second question raised is why all this attention paid to this closure versus all the others that happen across the country. Hint: It has something to do with the fact that it's local news for a lot of the big portals. I am not sure what response you would have gotten to a similar disaster on the busiest overpass in Dubuque, Iowa (presuming Dubuque has an overpass). But it does show the growing expectation for up-to-the-minute map data and the challenge for us in the industry to provide that.

I just returned from CTIA in Los Angeles where I listened to a lot of discussion on the implications of Nokia's purchase of Gate 5 last month. A colleague at the Canalys show in Geneva told me the same was true there. It is interesting not only that Nokia is jumping into this market, but also where they decided to jump in. Rather than buying a network based navigation application as one might expect for a mobile phone manufacturer, they bought an on-board application where the map data and navigation ap[plication reside on the mobile device, not the network. Couple that with the roadmaps that the map data companies are showing for dynamic content such as traffic, gas prices, etc. and it seems pretty obvious that Nokia will be moving towards a hybrid navigation model, with base map data and navigation application on the device supplemented by dynamic content and value added data from the network. Garmin and TomTom have made efforts in this areas, but Nokia has the market presence to drive the market if customers see the value. Watch that space!