Back in the Age of Exploration in the 1400s, the world lived and died on the maps cartographers and adventurers crafted. Relying on nothing but their own ingenuity, grit and know how, this was one of the world's first crowdsourced projects.

Fast forward about 600 years and we're light years ahead in terms of our mapping capabilities. But we're in a new age of mapping innovation. Options abound, but not as many exist for creating and updating existing maps. Sure, Google lets you report errors or even fix the problem yourself, but do you know anyone who's actually gone this route? And if they have, it's likely less a straight shot than the fabled "Inside Passage."

Right now, Google is spending heavy on maps and running into all sorts of privacy problems with its street level views and data storage practices. Meanwhile, Apple has notoriously failed to capture the market, due to inaccuracies in their Maps app.

Now, a new tool is attempting an open source approach to improve the accuracy of data and the maps themselves. You don't even need any software to build a map with this tool as all the code is open and available on Github.

Meet OpenStreetMap, which today debuts iD, a new open source, easy editing tool, letting anyone in the world quickly add and edit data. OpenStreetMap or OSM for short, is a community mapping project boasting more than 1 million users and 20,000 active users adding data each month. Last September, the prestigious Knight Foundation funded Development Seed and MapBox to improve OSM to the tune of $575,000 for winning the news challenge. By some accounts, it's poised to rival Google. If the new editing tool catches on, that may just happen.

Here's how it works: The crowdsourced mapping project collects raw data featuring location coordinates on streets, regions and buildings. That info is then taken by the Washington D.C. based MapBox, which uses that data to create custom embeddable maps and interactive journalism apps for Websites and mobile. MapBox then sells subscriptions to its service; meaning interactive street and satellite maps. Right now MapBox's 1,000 paying subscribers include Foursquare (which uses it to plot bars), Evernote (to track notes) and Hipmonk (to search hotels).

But it's not just MapBox users that benefit from the maps. Since the company does not have exclusive rights to the map data, as per OSM's licensing terms, if competitors use OSM, they must then return all improvements to the source, meaning that the maps on which MapBox are based on get even better.

The goal of this new editing tool is to build the community and let existing legacy users add more detail and meta-data to their maps.

Tom MacWright, MapBox's lead developer on the new iD tool calls the update "the most cutting-edge map tool ever made." He says coders around the world are already helping build and fix iD, which is "written in pure JavaScript with the d3 visualization library, and on open web standards that are constantly improving."

Right now OSM and MapBox are still relatively unknown by the masses. Still, OSM is adding 2,000 new users a day. That's no small change, and if the new edit tool brings in as many new users as its developers expect, it may not be so far fetched to forecast this service overtaking Google maps in the very near future. And with rumours that Facebook may be planning on switching from Microsoft Bing Maps to OSM, we may truly be entering a new age of exploration.

Thumbnail image via iStockphoto, SchulteProductions