Map Maker
Google Australia has today launched their Mapathon 2014 contest, a project which they hope will encourage Australians to map their neighborhoods and places they care about within Australia, while giving them the chance to win prizes.

The way the competition works is that you will edit points on Google Maps, Google has provided tools on their MapMaker page to allow you to add roads, businesses and more :

The drawing and annotation tools enable you to to draw roads and features and label these items based on personal knowledge of a region, city, or town. Additionally, you may use it to create points of interest, such as a school, business, or community feature, and to locate and describe points of interest.

You’ll be awarded points for each approved edit that’s accepted by the Google Maps team, with your progress displayed on your Mapathon login page. Participants will receive ‘One point for adding or modifying a non-business place, line, polygon or their attributes and Three points for adding or modifying a business place or any of its attributes.’

Mapathon 2014 is open to Australian residents 18 years or older and the prize pool includes :

  • The 5 participants with the highest scores will each win a Google Nexus 7 (32 GB, wifi) and a Red Balloon $500 (AUD) gift certificate.
  • The 10 participants with the next highest scores will each win a Google Nexus 7 (32 GB, wifi).
  • All the above 15 winners will also receive a Mapathon T-shirt and Certificate of Participation./li>
  • The 300 participants with the next highest scores will each win a Mapathon T-shirt and Certificate of Participation./li>

Head on over to the Mapathon website to sign up or check out the terms and conditions.

Source: Google Mapathon.

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    Maybe I can finally get my driveway removed, since it’s listed as a road. Confuses the hell out of tourists.

    No thanks. I’d rather contribute to OpenStreetMap, where anyone can use the data for whatever they like, rather than a commercial outfit, where even my use of my own data is restricted once it’s been submitted.

    Getting a lot of “your last action has timed out” errors when trying to submit new places…

    Can we just give them permission to mine our Ingress data for this? We’ve provided thousands of locations around Oz which could be added – most boring parks but thousands and thousands!
    Side note: I suggested it first, I claim any points from Australian Ingress data being used! 😛

    Good idea, and their new privacy policy actually would allow this. Not sure why they haven’t.