--- Neil Harris <usenet(a)tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote: http://www.galileosworld.com/galileosworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=756… I smell a new article for wikipedia coming on... ===== Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell chris_mahan(a)yahoo.com chris.mahan(a)gmail.com http://www.christophermahan.com/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw(a)users.sf.net> wrote: I agree. I say forget mapping. Just put in coordinates into physical location pages, and let the mapping software companies do their magic. ===== Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell chris_mahan(a)yahoo.com chris.mahan(a)gmail.com http://www.christophermahan.com/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw(a)users.sf.net> wrote: The mapping companies have the maps with the elevation with not much interesting on them. We add the stuff on the map that makes the map come alive. It's an overlay. Imagine walking around in israel and you bump your head in the wall. Oh, sorry. Imagine you have a wireless gps device and you're walking on a road and the devices announces: "According to Wikipedia, you are on the same road Roman General Vespasian marched on in 69AD with 9000 roman soldiers on the way to the fortress of Masada." A few minutes later: "This village hosts a regional olive competition that will last till Friday. Also, famed guitarist SomeMadeUp Name grew up here until he was 19." Would that not be fun? ===== Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell chris_mahan(a)yahoo.com chris.mahan(a)gmail.com http://www.christophermahan.com/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote: IF the GEO coordinate links to a special page, then this page could link to/show a mapquest map around that point, among other things. Or should we use such a map image which links to the special apge (like thumbnails)? That should be at least *some* feedback. And for missing geography data: How about wikipedition (wikipedia expedition) to collect that data? Imagine: Thousands of wikipedians all over the world emerging from their basements, roaming streets, shorelines, walking along rivers and climbing mountains, their GPS receivers in one hand, the data-logging laptop in the other, to discover new life and new civilizations, to boldly wander where no geek has wandered before ;-) And they could take pictures for wikimedia commons while they're at it! Magnus

On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 09:33:38PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote: Some of the data is easy to enter - locations of cities etc. Other is pretty difficult - like exact shapes of borders and rivers. Unfortunatelly it's the latter kind where the gaps are largest.

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote: Actually, you can do a lot of fun with geo coordinates even if you don't have access to mapping data. For example, you can compute the distance between two coordinates or you can list coordinates that are within close range of each other. In an article on Napoleon, you can follow every [[link]] and see if the pointed-to page has a coordinate, then you can put all these coordinates as numbered circles on a map overlay, to trace Napoleon's world tour. Then add this overlay to a map if you have one. Just like ISBN: numbers can be useful with any different online bookshop or even without any online bookshop, GEO: coordinates can be useful with different online map sources. This could be selected with individual user preferences. If I am a subscriber to a commercial online map source, my personalized view of Wikipedia could render GEO: coordinates as a link to that source. Since the contents with the GEO: coordinates is distributed under GFDL, another website can do something else with the GEO: coordinates. On http://susning.nu/Wroclaw the wiki text map:51.11:17.03:100000 (i.e. geo 51.11 N, 17.03 E) is rendered as a link to http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?latlongtype=decimal&latitude=51.11… The difficult thing is to agree on the exact shape of the world (ellipsoid, geoid). Converting between Greenwich and Paris meridian, between decimal and non-decimal degrees, or between different projections is trivial. But is 51.11 and 17.03 the official center of Wroclaw? Or is it a few dozen meters off? Mapquest seems to draw this coordinate at the Ratusz (town hall), which seems like a good choice, but another map source might have a different opinion. What does your GPS tell you? And which coordinate should be in the Wikipedia page? This is where some knowledge about cartography could be very useful. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Choosing_a_model_for_the_shape_… -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/