geowiki

Geowiki
http://www.geowiki.co.uk/geowiki/index1.html

Geowiki is a fascination website that combines the collaborative nature of the wiki with the map system. Users are to choose the city that they want, and pinpoint their favorite location on the map. This could be a restaurant, a mall, or a school. Information and comments can be added by other users. What the users see in the end is a map with points of interest that are in proximity of your favourite place. A search engine is also offered for people to search a specific place in the area that they want.
 * Description**

What I found brilliant about this site is how it adds another dimension to the meaning of map. Map has always been understood and used as an one-side informative tool. Yet with this site, you can input your own information, your own location to the map. This map perfectly fulfill the needs of the users, who we can assume, are familiar with the Internet technology and are interested in the collaborative nature and the social aspect of the internet. By allowing the option of inputing your own place and posting comments up, it creates a community that is organized and socialized in the virtual world, which may very well leads the creation on an actual, physical community surrounding the places that were pinpointed on the map. Users of this site may meet up in on the locations on the map, and begin their own community. In this sense, this website is facilitating interaction both in the virtual and physical world.
 * Analysis**

This website also organized information in terms of proximity. This includes how it browses and searches information. This method of looking up what is closed to you has the needs and behavior of a visitor in mind. A person who wants to look around the city usually does not know a specific name or an address. What they do is usually just walking or driving around their neighbhours, hoping to find somet interesting places. So instead of presenting locations in a list format, categorized by its functions (like in a phone box), the site present the information in the order of what is closest to you. This is much better way of organizing information than alphabetical order. It makes much more sense.