Investigating Visual Media

Mapbox

Create your own user generated maps

Mapbox is a new player in the open-source mapping movement, creating user-generated maps to compete with the professionally generated content of sites such as Google or Bing Maps. It's ambitious goal is the create a better map of the world.

The content is created by the Mapbox team and drawn from a combination of privately-purchased satellite data and open data from NASA, as well as user-generated OpenStreetMap, and looks to create a sort of Wikipedia for the mapping sector. The difference with MapBox is that users can access and alter data in its raw form.

Mapbox lowers the barrier to entry for creating web maps and publishing geodata on small budgets. Anyone can use the platform for free, allowing you 3,000 map views a month and 50MB of upload storage, and there is a premium option for corporate clients.

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