Mapquest, for instance, uses crowdsourcing with 320, 000 registered mappers who are sending in thousands of tweaks every week.

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But amid the devastation, forensic mappers are hoping to find clues.

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Even as Venter was triumphing over the government's gene-mappers in 2000, stock in Celera plummeted as it dawned on investors that the company would have trouble turning DNA data into cash.

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Researchers at Rosetta Inpharmatics , a subsidiary of Merck (nyse: MRK - news - people), and elsewhere also see evidence that the gene mappers missed a lot of genes.

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Medieval mappers put much effort into locating Paradise.

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