Wikimapia Blog

Meet the renewed Wikimapia blog

2009-12-04T01:51:00.000-08:00

After the release of a new version it was necessary for us to bring our users the maximum enjoyment from using of updated Wikimapia. We believe that we managed to do this. And now we are ready to provide you the latest information on the development of Wikimapia, useful advice and guidance, our videos and presentations, and much more interesting in our renewed blog, which got a new web address.

Moreover, in our blog you will be able to find out a lot about project participants and Wikimapia users in different countries. Also here we will pass our opinions on issues of interest to us. Soon you will have the opportunity to share this information with friends, importing these posts to your blogs at the popular online hangouts, including facebook, twitter, etc.

Hope to see you again soon at http://blog.wikimapia.org

Forum and other stuff

2007-10-16T13:45:00.000-07:00

Not a very new information (we are quite busy with development): we opened a forum to be closer to our collaborators, to let them guide us and talk to each other about Wikimapia subjects. Link is here: http://wikimapia.org/forum/

Also there are many minor updates in many aspects, plus after many requests we will turn on mouse wheel support. Bigger updates are coming, before we have to talk with our advanced users and let them test it before releases - I will not give detailed info at this moment.

Wikimapia in August

2007-08-16T13:30:00.000-07:00

Currently we are working on new version of Wikimapia, beta of which we are planning to reveal in September. What will be in new version:
-fully editable map, possibility of adding/updating map objects like buildings, regions, roads, e.g. everything we usually see on the map and even more with description and other useful information
-all information will be categorized
-user trust system with object verification system

We hope that with this changes we will have a time to finish export routine coding, that any user could be able to download data they've created in Wikimapia to their portable devices or favorite software.

Also we are planning to publish: Terms of Service, Copyright Notice and Privacy Notice.

Wikimapia at Google Mapplets

2007-06-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

31st of May we visited Google Developers Day in Moscow where Google presented their new future addition to Google Maps - Mapplets (a kind of gadget for maps).

After a while we made Wikimapia mapplet which in fact is a layer of Wikimapia on Google Maps. Currently Google Mapplets function is in preview mode, for techgeeks interesting in it there's a special link.

So, to see a Wikimapia layer on Google Maps you've to add Wikimapia layer to your Google mapplets using this link, and then this layer will be visible at Google Maps 2 preview.

Wikimapia turns one year old

2007-05-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

We opened Wikimapia one year ago, on May 24, 2006. It was an amazing idea and since that time Wikimapia takes the biggest part in our life.

What has been done during this year? Wikimapia collected nearly 4 million places (+3700k plus +200k moved to trash, and +100k precise polygons created), +60k users registered in Wikimapia in 6 last months, +500k messages left by visitors.

Wikimapia also entered into 1000 most visited sites in Alexa statistics, it took nearly one year to do this.

We would like to thank our contributors for their knowledge, our visitors for their interest, Wikipedia for it's inspiration and Google Maps for supporting new technologies in whole world.

What will be in future? Road mark-up (in real Wikimapia way), address and routing systems, further evolution in search, more useful map layers, places filtering system, new user administrative functions, and other neat upgrades.

We develop internet together, the future comes soon enough!

Localization, translation of user interface.

2007-04-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

We finished translation system, and now we are able to translate Wikimapia interface to all languages we want. We have 60 languages and only Russian and English translated.

If you want to help us to translate (using easy web interface) from English into languages below, please contact us at wikimapia@gmail.com and send your Wikimapia username and real name (to be remembered in Wikimapia history). Also you may check at Wikipedia if languages are taken for translation.

To translate:
Afrikaans
Albanian
Arabic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Basque
Belarussian
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Chinese
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Estonian
Finnish
French
Galician
German
Greek
Gujarati
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Indonesian
Italian
Japanese
Kannada
Korean
Latvian
Lithuanian
Macedonian
Malay
Malayalam
Marathi
Nepali
Norwegian
Oriya
Persian (Farsi)
Polish
Portuguese
Punjabi
Romanian
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish
Sundanese
Swahili
Swedish
Tagalog
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu
Vietnamese

Polygons and Geotools.

2007-03-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

Polygons

We are making firsts steps with vector data in Wikimapia. From now it is possible to add polygon info for places (only for registered users at this moment).

We cannot show many polygons now (browsers are too slow with them), later we will find a better way to present polygons. For now we just highlight polygon for mouseovered place.

Example: Moscow Kremlin

For improvements, ideas, bugs and comments write us to wikimapia@gmail.com, or duscuss it at Wikipedia.

GeoTools

We added measuring of distance and area, we hope you would find them useful. Look in main Wikimapia menu.

3 million places

2007-03-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

On 8 march 2007 Wikimapia passed 3 million places (I don't count here 200000 places which were deleted).

We are planning soon:
*add more languages
*localisation
*wiki docs + internal forum
*polygons, finally
*some more things

Search as local search

2007-02-12T15:11:00.000-08:00

Local search is essential thing, it means if you are at the center of London and looking for a hotel, the search gives you the hotels nearest to the center of viewed map (where you see a cross).

Local search, in our definition, is a search where we have results ordered by distance and the nearest are shown.

We have always been thinking about this kind of search, but only now we have technology to provide it (in a fast way through all places). Currently we are finishing some tests and soon we will make this search as default. Now we have 4 different tabs (all, city, local, coordinates) and we will move local to all so there will be only 3 tabs (all, city, coordinates).

January: new design.

2007-02-03T00:59:00.000-08:00

January:

This January we were changing the site design and search functions. But search is not finished yet. This wasn't easy work and also a lot of to be made.

Also this month we visited new Google office in Moscow (just near Red Square and Kremlin) to meet Sergey Burkov, head of Moscow Google R&D. We talked about about our project and other different subjects. Now we both (me and Evgeny) have original "Searching for Inspiration Spiral Notebooks" and "Summer of Love Translucent Wide Body Pens".

Place types, etc.

2007-01-11T16:50:00.000-08:00

Hello in 2007.

We decided to force place types division, which we started few month ago. This is needed to show different place types in different ways. Soon all places with be put to appropriate place type (even old ones).

Few days ago we, finally, fixed uncatchable Mac Safari bugs (I even tested it on my PC by launching PearPC). The meaning of this is that we rewrote many internal browser-related functions - Wikimapia must work now a little bit faster.

And, we are finishing some more useful stuff which I'll introduce later.

Merry Christmas and A Happy New 2007 Year

2006-12-29T05:07:00.000-08:00

We wish good luck to all people on the Globe (and to all on ISS). So, Happy New Year and Merry Christmas (note Russians have Xmas on 7th of Jan.).

Latest news.

We are improving Wikimapia, step-by-step. Two days ago main server changed to a new server, it's faster, has more memory and the fastest SCSI disks. We reconfigured many things, data output should be faster.

Every day we backup everything to another server, so under any circumstances we won't lost the information.

Thanks for your emails, we read them all and reply to some.

What we are doing

2006-12-05T14:46:00.000-08:00

Evgene took a small holidays, and I've been working on a cache system for Wikimapia - because we have more and more data and big traffic, so we have to handle it somehow. So I've done with it and will finish some user functions which I describe in FAQ.

Half year and 2,000,000 places reached

2006-11-22T14:10:00.000-08:00

On november, 22^nd we reached 2 million places, and on 24^th we celebrate a half year of Wikimapia.
Also there are 101,524 places, which were deleted since beginning, later there will be a function to view them.
We continue our work on the project, still making user functions, place card, local search and other things.

Work

2006-11-14T02:57:00.000-08:00

We are quite busy, but also there are no important things to present right now, all new things still in production. However I can tell you about some new improvements and facts:

1. We added internal message exchange, later we will add a function to write to non-registered users.

2. API is finished, but not widely opened. Mgmaps for mobile phones and Google Earth uses exactly this API.

3. Still discuss licensing.

4. Introduced private-colored boxes, later we will have more colored different categories.

5. Polylines and paths. I want to implement it as fast as possible, and this is so easy for us, but Evgeny insist that we have to wait and that this would complex the service which must be easy.

6. Wikimapia is growing, now we have 1923587 places.. ah not, this was some minutes ago, now we have 1923754 places. I don't include 97482 places which were deleted and saved to `history`.

7. People from India still insist that we provide clearer images for their locations. We cannot do this, maybe we should forward the letters to Google Maps team?

8. Some people don't understand that it's an editable site (wiki), and asking us to update some information.

9. Google Maps updates shift imagery. A hundred meters left, a hundred meters right - this is not right.

That's not all, but I can't tell you more now.

Wikimapping

2006-10-28T03:58:00.000-07:00

In fact we are not only coding the Wikimapia project. We are exploring the world in reality. There are many unknown places we have around us. Near our town we have strange rounds on satellite imagery. We took a photocamera and went there by car.

It is an abadonned аnd dismounted Naval radiostation (we tried to identificate this object during some weeks using local forum).

Next wonder we visited one day was a huge white mountain of phosphorites.

And interesting thing was a huge scrap metal of old machines near white phosphorite mountain.

Work on user functions and Google Maps update shifts

2006-10-23T15:20:00.000-07:00

We are busy with user functions, what will be done very soon:
All user activity or history - created places, commented, i've been here, etc.
Wikipedia-style history for places with some admin features.

Also a month ago we've been alerted about satellite image shift at Calgary, Canada. I manually shifted a part of this city area. Two weeks ago it was a slight shift in Kiev, Ukraine. I didn't shift places (there's a Kiev guardian Igor Rozkladay, so I think he took care of this, btw, users have the possibility to move/change locations).

Today I noticed, par hazard (occationally, by looking at huge keyboard), that Yekaterinbourg images was shifted to some seconds. So I moved all places in trouble area (ab.500) but I expect some of them were placed after image update, so currently their position is wrong.

It's strange about this shifts. Maybe we need a kind of SHIFT ALERT :)

Registration started

2006-10-08T15:23:00.000-07:00

We started the registration with minimum implemented functions, the main thing is that users are now able to move/resize places with history. We are going to add more user functions step-by-step, giving to known user more control of Wikimapia.

To register just click at Login/Register in drop-down menu under Wikimapia.

To receive first level Wiki functionality user have to wait 3 days. However, if you have been in contact with Wikimapia before 8 october 2006, or you are an active Wikipedia user, you may raise your rank without waiting:
• for those contacted Wikimapia before - drop a line to wikimapia@gmail.com (with username or email of Wikimapia user);

• for Wikipedians - go to this link at Wikipedia and write under "Approving Wikipedians" your username at Wikimapia;

Wikimapia now feeds Google Earth

2006-10-02T02:03:00.000-07:00

After 4 month we are finally able (from the resourse and technical point) to feed Google Earth with Wikimapia data. If you have Google Earth installed you may click on our Wikimapia data feeder for Google Earth. You may read some more info at Matt blog.

At this moment we export chapes, place name and link information. The problem is that Google Earth baloon cannot load information from external source (only images). Hope we will find the way to show some place information in Google Earth baloon.

p.s. Wikimapia reached 1621646 places.

Commentaries and photos

2006-09-25T14:42:00.000-07:00

We added possibility to comment places and to add a photo (it's in menu).

GPS to WikiMapia (at this time for Windows only)

2006-09-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

We release beta program for connecting Wikimapia site and GPS receiver.

To connect WikiMapia with GPS receiver download this small software (174kb). Unzip it, start it, select com port and press "Start GPS" button.

You will have window like this:

Then press "Show on WikiMapia", a default browser will be opened, cross will show your current location:

If you have warning about missing dll files, you may download them directly from this page (1mb).

We are waiting for your sugestions, ideas and bug reports by e-mail (wikimapia@gmail.com) or our blog.

Mobile devices: MGmaps and WikiMapia

2006-09-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

Cristian Streng, the creator of MGmaps (Google maps for mobile devices), provided a basic support for Wikimapia in his latest MGmaps release.

Download the software for you phone or another mobile device you may from http://www.mgmaps.com/download.php.

Later I will write about another software to use with Wikimapia on PDA's.

Registration

2006-08-26T05:34:00.000-07:00

We finished main routine with premoderation, but usability must be improved and some upcoming-to-map formulas. Finally, next week we plan to attack registration routine (with Karma, of course).

Stats:
Places before premoderation 1,282,468 (stalled)
Places to moderate 7,716 (saturday, half day, for the first fast look 75% of them are really ok)

p.s. We reading many emails with suggestions. Many good letters.
p.p.s. In great country India people use Wikimapia to mark their homes. I cannot say is it good or not. They just do it. So we have to handle this somehow, we need to find a solution.

Premoderation

2006-08-22T13:39:00.000-07:00

It's just a matter of time.

Wikimapia reached 1 million places

2006-08-16T03:26:00.000-07:00

A copy of http://www.wikimapia.org/#doc=news.html.
August 16, 2006

We announce the creation of the 1,000,000th place. This place is Upper Room Apostolic Faith Church situated in Kansas, USA. In the same time was placed a Stony Mountain Curling Rink in Canada and Doeblinger Bad Public Sweeming Pool in Austria.

There are many of Earth towns and cities have already been tagged - down to grocery shops. Wikimapia is based on the same principle as Wikipedia, a free-access encyclopedia created by the online community. For well-mapped countries like US and in Europe, Wikimapia is an additional tool, helping locate interesting places. But in asian countries, with almost no mapping, at least digital, this is a very useful tool.

Wikimapia has also come in for criticism, partly for its technology that needs to be smoothened, but more so for the fact that it can be misused with unwanted content. It's a privacy threat and can create problems. But it's not only a problem of Wikimapia itself, Internet is a dangerous thing, like the life.

WikiMapia is a free, multilingual, online wiki map, it allows people to mark physical locations on a map and add description in wiki style.

Current WikiMapia statistics

Most described cities

Bombay, India - 55577

Calcutta, India - 52099

Manila, Philippines - 42665

Madras, India - 29690

Ponnani, India - 24384

Bangalore, India - 22206

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam - 20723

Hanoi, Vietnam - 20387

Mangaluru, India - 19022

Hyderabad, India - 18820

Ahmadabad, India - 16945

Delhi, India - 13254

Thiruvananthapuram, India - 12400

Moscow, Russia - 8792

Mormugao, India - 8724

Bhubaneswar, India - 8659

Dubai, United Arab Emirates - 8643

Dammam, Saudi Arabia - 8296

Visakhapatnam, India - 8163

Indore, India - 6980

Most used languages

English - 886213

Vietnamese - 32530

Arabic - 28106

Russian - 27591

Portuguese - 23635

Spanish - 11242

Hindi - 10774

Polish - 7292

Chinese - 6411

German - 4691

Romanian - 4436

French - 3911

Hungarian - 3010

Belorussian - 2786

Italian - 2460

Japanese - 2385

Korean - 2092

Dutch - 1332

Hebrew - 1086

Turkish - 936

Improvements

2006-08-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

We made many improvements during last two weeks, mostly in code speed and usability. We still want to check on natural Mac's Safari (our tests are on latest Safari Mac OS Tiger using PearPC PowerPC, seeing some `glucks` with rectangles).

How to add a Google Map to any web page in 30 seconds.

2006-08-06T14:20:00.000-07:00

1) Go to WikiMapia.org site and find a part of the map that you need.
2) Click WikiMapia at the top right corner and choose map on your page link.
3) Move and resize frame you see to desired view, adjust view setting if needed and copy given html code to your page or blog.

That's all.

Here is a map placing example of Egypt pyramids:

Some sites already using this technique:
bostonist.com
aimk.blogspot.com

Language distribution on 3 aug 2006

2006-08-04T06:28:00.000-07:00

English 728136
Vietnamese 29963
Russian 25361
Portuguese 19892
Arabic 13337
Spanish 10123
Hindi 8237
Polish 6800
Chinese 5648
Romanian 4070
German 3990
French 3180
Hungarian 2522
Japanese 2225
Belorussian 2029
Korean 2019
Italian 1883
Dutch 1223
Hebrew 942
Turkish 811
Bulgarian 739
Armenian 657
Norwegian 551
Croatian 531
Latvian 435
Thai 406
Swedish 242
Persian (Farsi) 197
Finnish 193
Lithuanian 184
Estonian 176
Danish 114
Czech 113
Greek 109
Slovak 79
Slovenian 51
Serbian 20
Swahili 5