Michal Migurski with Stamen Design kickstarts something really cute: Walking Papers.
Print maps, draw on them, scan them back in and help OpenStreetMap improve its coverage of local points of interests and street detail.
It's all about detail and ease of use to enrich existing mapping efforts:
What such partially-mapped places need is not more GPS traces, but additional knowledge about what exists on and around the street. (...) eye-level features that would be invisible on an aerial image, meaningless in the absence of base road data, and impossible to collect without a site visit (...)
The idea is to print out OSM-maps, walk around the mapped area, annotate missing artefacts manually using a simple pen, then scanning the result and uploading it.
Some poor mechanical turks then need to add nodes, correct geometries and attributes, mark POIs and sightings back into the OSM basemap.
Despite or even because of this "post-digital, medieval technology"- it's simply lovely.
The reduce-to-the-max, crispy clear website is why I deeply adore Stamen for.
We're going to be testing this out with actual stuff at tomorrow's SF mapping party, fingers crossed.