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11.05.07
Google Maps And Wikipedia Mashup
 By
Chris "Silver" Smith
An addictive little mashup called WikipediaVision has combined Google Maps with live data on updates from the English Wikipedia to display the geolocation of people editing articles in near real-time.
The map rapidly pans back and forth across the world, pinpointing the locations of users who have just edited an article, and displaying the name of the article and its hyperlink.
(click to enlarge)
It's interesting and hypnotic to sit and watch where in the world the most recent article update has occurred.
It's sort of educational to witness the sequence of article edits, too, because I think it gives one a real feel for how fast articles can get edited, reverted, re-edited, etc.
Just while watching it all unfold, I've witnessed little minor tiffs as someone in South America edits an article and then someone in Canada shortly after goes and reverts the edit or adjusts it as
well.
The mashup is created by László Kozma, and it's inspired by David Troy's FlickrVision which allows you to see the most recent photos uploaded by endusers on a worldwide map.
One thing that I'd suggest that László might add to this: display the username of the person who's making the edit in the little pinpoint cloud, hyperlinked to their user page!
Comments
About the Author:
Chris formerly headed up the Advanced Technology Department for Verizon Superpages.com (later spun off under Idearc Media), where he worked for ten years, specializing in patent-pending work in mapping, local search, analytics, and SEO. As the natural search optimization expert for Idearc, he founded and chaired the company's SEO Council. Chris is currently a Lead Search Strategist for Netconcepts, a search optimization firm. Chris is a regular columnist for Search Engine Land, covering the 'local search' beat. He also blogs for Natural Search Blog, and speaks at industry conferences such as Search Engine Strategies.
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