Monday, November 03, 2008

Wikimapia BETA: Realtime Editable Map of the World Launched

Wikimapia BETA
Everyone's favourite Google Maps mash-up Wikimapia has undergone a big update. WikiMapia is a Google Maps based wiki system which allows anyone to add information to any location on Earth. The map now has over 8.5 million places marked - and it just got even better with Wikimapia BETA.

In Wikimapia Beta you can easily add places, roads, rail roads and ferry crossings which become visible on the map immediately. Moreover, the Wikimapia map is interactive, so you may click on any location and see detailed information, provided by other users.

Wikimapia BETA has two main views - satellite and map. The Satellite map view shows the original Google satellite imagery with places that are interactive outlined. Here is an example embedded below:


The Wikimapia map view, which is drawn from all users contributions, is also interactive

Another great feature of Wikimapia is that you may assign categories to added places. By clicking on a specified category in the menu, for example "reactor", you can see all the different reactors around the world.

Wikimapia is available in many languages and is waiting for you "To describe the whole world!"

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6 comments:

- said...

How can wikimapia just ignore the issue of the copyright of the map data if they encourage copying from Google/Teleatlas et al.

OpenStreetMap is the best solution for now, its coverage beats wikimapia by far - London, for example http://www.wikimapia.org/beta/#lat=51.5142979&lon=-0.0597382&z=11&l=0&m=w&v=1

Anonymous said...

Have you guys lost the plot? Have you spent more than 90 seconds looking at the google terms of use or asked an IP lawyer about what you're doing?

Keir Clarke said...

I've contacted Wikimapia and they say Google has no copyright issues with them.

This isn't about people copying Google Maps. For example, Check out Google's view of Kiev with Wikimapia's:

http://wikimapia.org/beta/#lat=50.4301741&lon=30.50354&z=12&l=0&m=w&v=1

Google map TeleAtlas data:
http://wikimapia.org/beta/#lat=50.4301741&lon=30.50354&z=12&l=0&m=m&v=1

Anonymous said...

This sounds like the sort of that OpenStreetMap is doing, except that OSM is light years ahead in terms of the data that's available. OSM is also licenced under a much freer licence.

Anonymous said...

Wikimapia has a very good map. Everybody is welcomed. Join us! Lietuviai - prisijunkite!

RM.Raja said...

This is a very good map. But in my PC the map is breaking, it’s not coming full. What will be the reason? Any required software is missing in my PC? Google map is coming well. Please clear my problem.