C|net Tackles PublicEarth and OSM

My personal favorite BOLer (that’s Buzz Outloud, C|net’s daily tech podcast) Rafe Needleman covers the user generated content site in an article title Crowdsourcing Cartography. PublicEarth launched Monday and is a Google Maps-based POI collection. Michael Rubin, an architect for Netflix is behind it; so the idea is to make a tool for places, akin to what Netflix is for movies. There’s even a recommendations engine, just like Netflix. The business model?

The PublicEarth team wants to make this service the go-to database of unusual places, and to partner with standard booking sites like Hotels.com, OpenTable, and travel solutions like TripIt. Getting traffic from those sites will get people into the system, and then sending booking and ticket traffic out to venues will generate revenue.

Needleman also covers the upcoming MapZen from Cloudmade, a new, easier to use tools to add to and edit OpenStreetMap.

There’s no mention that it’s Geography Awareness Week!

- C|net