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WIKIMAPIA
| Let's describe the whole World! |
Inspired by the success and usability of google map two individuals from russia Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev opened another mapping service called wikimapia on May 24, 2006 for internet users.Wikipedia is an online map and satellite mapping service almost similar to google maps with a very unique wiki service which allows users to add a note to the map which can be accessed and viewed by anyone online.
wikimapia is a free resourse .registration is not mandatory,wikimapia is a digital satellite mapping service which takes map service from google.just like google map you can browse through places the most charm of wikimapia is the tagging service which enables users to freely use the vast map resourse freely and tag or placemark a place marking a polygon.that means you can placemark your native home or the tree under which you first kissed your fiance.Thats a great magic of wikimapia.along with tag marking you can upload upto seven photos of the tagged place.so you can not even tag your home but also show up the world how your bedroom looks like.great way to show off....the latest addition is you tube videos to the taged place.so if you like you can show how you fight with your spouse in the bedroom too as a popular youtube video.
Location tagging is fully multi-lingual,Currently a total of 101 languages are supported, and 100% of the interface has been translated into 56 languages.but this feature is available only to registered Wikipedia users.
Wikimapia also allows users to add so-called "linear features", meaning roads, railroads, ferry lines, and rivers. The interface allows users to specify the size of the road (major highway, side street, dirt road, etc.), to indicate one-way streets, and to provide a brief description. It also allows users to describe intersections and tunnels.
since users only contribute the greatest extend in enhancing the service,
Users can vote in favor of or against other users' contributions, thereby allowing users to rise in status among the community. There also is a user statistics and ranking board which automatically ranks users based on their contributions. However, vote tallies and user statistics have no impact on a user's user-level.so it also poses fraud to data and faulty map tagging.
WikiMapia growth has been phenomenally rapid. This rapid growth brought problems of its own,Urban areas became covered with thousands of overlapping rectangles marking the positions of private residences, but there was no provision in the WikiMapia interface for distinguishing those residences from places of public interest. Recently,although category browsing has been introduced, allowing users to select what category or categories of features they want displayed.but this is not going to help much because fraud or wrong markings or intentional errorsum map tagging.so the next big question is who is going to filter those clutter and errors.
wikimapia beta version can be integrated with GPS receiver, so you can directly see the places along with the tagging into your GPS device, thats a real great service offered by wikimapia.download this software and install it in order to integrate map data with your device .download.
-For improvements, ideas, bugs and comments write to wikimapia@gmail.com,
read more about the latest wikimapia beta release which has solved the map retangle clutters to some great extend read it here:
A catalog of NASA images and animations of our home planet