Mapped and loaded

City surfers are having fun with Wikimapia,a software that combines Wikipedia and Google Earth. Ridhi D’Cruz reports.

Let’s define the whole Earth’ is the catch phrase for a project launched in May 2006 by Russians Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev. Inspired by two technological leaps — Wikis, a software that allows easy, open collaboration, whereby anyone can edit and make changes, and Google maps, which has massive amounts of satellite imagery available online — the duo came up with Wikimapia.

Barely six months down the line, Wikimapia is driving the global online community crazy with excitement. And the biggest buzz is not in America or Europe, but in South Asia. What’s more, Mumbai is the most described city in the world, with almost 70,000 places mapped in the city. Kolkata is next.

Thanks to Wikimapia, travellers around the world are sighing with relief; they can now locate different places on their mobile phones, by using Wikimapia in combination with geo-positioning systems.

Japanese visitor Naoki Tejima, who calls himself an ‘Indophile and idli lover’, can now find postings that even the Lonely Planet misses. And Tejima’s friends in India know exactly where to find his house in Tokyo.

Blogger Prakash Swaminathan is excited because his obscure village in Tamil Nadu has been mapped.

College student Rehana, who moved from Chennai to Mumbai, pined for her daily cup of filter coffee, until recently. “Thanks to a posting on Wikimapia, I have finally found a good place for real coffee, South Indian style,” she says. 

Apart from being able to add your own titbit about a place, avoid getting lost or sight-see without leaving your chair, Wikimapia’s charm lies in its spirit of democracy. The technology door is left open for people to customise, create, collaborate and share.

According to Pallavi Latkar of the Centre for Urban Studies, Mumbai, “Wikimapia has the potential to be a good tool to gather data at the NGO and ward level. It can generate greater interest and participation amongst citizens.”

Accessing and using Wikimapia is simple and how-to-use directions are easily available. On his site, http://wikimapia.mattjonesblog.com American blogger Matt Jones has written step-by-step instructions on a number of topics including adding a place on Wikimap.

It’s this simplicity and sheer fun that’s drawn in loads of people. One Mumbai posting reads: “Pintoo stays here, along with Monu, and Popu the cat.” A posting in Shimla: “Tatti khaana. People defecate here.”
Co-founder Koriakine is unconvinced about this kind of information being put up. In one of his posts, he writes: “In a great country like India, people use Wikimapia to mark their homes. I cannot say if it is good or not. They just do it. So we have to handle this somehow, we need to find a solution.”

 — Additional reporting by Sanjay Bhangar