Google Map Maker

For those that don't know, Google Maps just opened up the Google Map Maker web application to allow normal users to enter data into Google Maps. After a review process, those edits can be published into the public Google Maps for the world to see. I was pretty excited when I learned about it in April, and I've been pretty active.

Recently I received an e-mail from the Google Map Maker Community Team. Because I'm "one of the top mappers in the United States," they offered to send me a free t-shirt, and invited me to the Google Geo User Summit in Mountain View. I had to regretfully decline the offer to attend the summit, but the t-shirt is pretty awesome.

	From July 2011

My friends and I were trying to figure out what the map on the front is showing. At first glance, it looks like a map of the world's lights at night, but some major countries, like the US, Canada, UK, France, and Russia are not lit up. So what do the white areas represent? My speculation is that those represent major road systems that Map Maker users have added which were not previously recorded in Google Maps, but I'm not sure. Does anyone know?