The sixth edition of my how to use Wikimapia shows you how to turn a place marker into a polygon that fits your location. (Images are clickable for larger versions.)

Here is Green Lake in Seattle, WA. The lake is obviously not a square. With the addition of polygons, we can now fit the place marker to fit the lake.

Click on the place marker you want to turn into a polygon. Go to the menu in the upper left corner and select “Resize Polygon” to get rid of the boring square.

You will then be greeted with your place marker outlined in red with movable handles.

You have a few options for changing the shape. My recommendation is to move the four corners into the edges of your location. That is somewhat confusing, I know, use the above picture as an example. This isn’t the only way to move things, this is just how I start it. You will have to play around with things to get a feel for it.

The next step is to add more points simply by licking the new locations where you want the point. For something roundish (like Green Lake) you will have to add lots of points, for something mostly square, you won’t have to do much. When you have got all your points marked, click “Save Polygon” at the bottom of your screen.

Once it is saved, you can roll your mouse over the place marker and you will see it outlined in green.

Even when you zoom out, if you roll over the location, it will be outlined in green.

Visit Green Lake and its new polygon shape at Wikimapia.

The Matt’s Wikimapia Blog “How To” Series:
How To #1: Adding a New Place
How To #2: Upcoming Places
How To #3: Pictures and Comments
How To #4: Adding Wikimapia and Google Maps to your Website
How To #5: YouTube in Wikimapia!
How To #6: Adding Polygons

Here are the beautiful rolling hills of Italy. And what is that there 1600m up Colletto Fava? Oh yes, it is a giant rabbit!

The installed art project called Hase (which means Rabbit) was created by artist gelitin and was opened in 2005 and will remain in place for visitors to rest upon and climb until 2025. For more info on this … interesting? bizarre? clever? whatever you want to call it, see the project page here. You can also visit the location at Wikimapia!

The Trojan Nuclear Power Plant in Ranier, Oregon has been completely decommissioned as of April of 2005 and its large cooling tower was demolished in May of 2006. The demolition of the cooling tower was a pretty big event that drew a large audience.

This is the reactor dome that was decommissioned in late 1992 because of a steam generator tube leak. In early 1993 Portland General Electric announced that they would not repair the plant. Trojan has been in the process of decommissioning ever since. The demolition of the cooling tower was one of the last major steps in that process.

Here is an image from the demolition.

Here we can see some imagery that is fairly recent because the tower is missing. The large circle is where the tower formerly stood. Here is a video clip of the demolition:

Visit Trojan at Wikipedia or at Wikimapia. You can also check out my blog post on Trojan’s cooling tower demolition.

I just discovered another awesome feature on Wikimapia: YouTube videos can be added to Wikimapia locations! Adding YouTube video URLs will automatically embed them into the place information page along with a link to the video’s page at YouTube. Pretty cool, eh? Start adding video clips to Wikimapia!

If you would like a walk through, here it is as part of Matt’s Wikimapia Blog’s How To Series (images are clickable for larger images). I was checking out Six Flags Magic Mountain at Wikimapia and since I haven’t been there in 10 years or so, noticed a few new rides. I saw the new roller coaster “X” and its description of being a “4th Dimensional Roller Coaster” (which I still think is a misnomer) and thought it would be cool to see the ride in action and hopped over to YouTube. I found three videos there that were pretty awesome, naturally I figured they should be added as links in Wikimapia so everyone could enjoy them!

Here is California and Six Flags at Magic Mountain. Zooming in to the Southwestern part of the park, we can see the new coaster “X”.

The fancy new metal coaster has seats that rotate!

Here is the information page that I need to edit. Going up to “Menu” I select “Edit this page”.

Now I can simply add the URLs to the videos at YouTube for others to enjoy! (Notice that the second video has swearing in it so I felt it appropriate to add a disclaimer) I assumed that when I clicked “save” I would see the information screen with the video links, but I was very pleasantly surprised to find this:

The videos are embedded! They can be played right in the information page! You can also click the video URL to take you to the YouTube page. You may remember that I found three video clips but I only put in two. This is because, as of right now, there is a problem with the URL format in some of the clips so Wikimapia doesn’t recognize them. The video URL “www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-y16RrN0C0” was not able to be embedded (I think) because of the dash between the “k” and “y”. I imagine this problem will be corrected eventually.

Great new feature isn’t it? Visit “X” at Wikimapia here.

The Matt’s Wikimapia Blog “How To” Series:
How To #1: Adding a New Place
How To #2: Upcoming Places
How To #3: Pictures and Comments
How To #4: Adding Wikimapia and Google Maps to your Website
How To #5: YouTube in Wikimapia!
How To #6: Adding Polygons

Registration: Do it. Even if you don’t see the immediate benefits or features, might as well do it now as they are constantly adding features and capabilities. To register, click the “WikiMapia” menu and select “login/register” and just follow the steps. It takes some time for the registration to go through, so just be patient. One you are registered, you will have a basic profile (I am assuming that down the road you will be able to make more modifications of it). In that profile you can add a picture and pick your location. You will also be able to see places you have commented on and places you have created. Message sent to you will also be indicated here. [ADDENDUM: I am NOT saying register at this blog, I am saying register at WIKIMAPIA! Feel free to register as a user here if you want, but it won’t get you much!]

Messages: when someone leaves a comment and is registered, you have to ability to send them a message through the system.

Wikimapia is approaching 2 million places marked!!

Registered users can now delete places and pictures that have been added. It is also now possible to “semi-protect” articles so it is more difficult for people to edit the info for the protected place.

Wikimapia (and my blog too!!) are still getting requests for updates. There are two issues here. 1) Wikimapia has NO CONTROL over the map imagery. AT ALL. NEITHER DO I! Hehe, really, see my Matt’s Wikimapia Blog FAQ #4 for the reasons. 2) If it is the place information that needs to be updated, YOU update it! This is a Wiki site, that means the users have the power to edit things if they are needed.

Another thing that the Official Wikimapia Blog noted was the fact that when Google Maps updates their imagery it sometimes gets shifted. I am not sure why this happens. I am assuming that they know it happens, but that we just have to deal with it. I noticed this when looking down at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Solution? Just change the locations. If you open up the place that in slightly in the wrong position because of the shift (or for any reason really), go to the “Menu” menu and select “move or resize” (I believe this will only work for registered users). Then just make it fit the correct location! Done and done.

Some reminders: Add photos to places! I think it is awesome to have a satellite view of something but then to also see what it look like from other vantages. Add photos! Do it! heh. Edit places. Just because a place has already been created doesn’t mean they are complete or correct. If you know something about the place, check it out, correct the information that is there and add to it if you can. Add websites to places. Yes, add Wikipedia links (they now have a dedicated spot), but also add webpages or news stories about the place. Anything that can add to the information! Stop adding stupid places! I don’t need to know where your home is, really. Yes, you technically can add it under “private places”, but don’t. Also, don’t add spam, inappropriate places, all caps places… you get the idea. They will just be rejected or deleted and there is a good chance you will get your IP blocked. So just stop it.

Wikimapia will also be adding new shapes (so your location doesn’t have to be rectangle) and different colors for different types of places. There is always lots more to come! If you want to see the discussion about development and other issues there are three places to check out: Wikimapia @ Wikipedia Talk Page, Alexandre Koriakine @ Wikipedia Talk Page, and Wikimapia @ Meta.Wikimedia.

The Bay Bridge connects San Francisco and Oakland through two different sections. After the big earthquake in 1989 one of the sections on the eastern span (built in the 1930s) collapsed. This necessitated an earthquake retrofitting.

It was decided that a retrofit to the existing bridge would not be feasible so plans for a new eastern span were put in motion.

Here you can see the construction of the new bridge and the location of the collapsed (and repaired) section of the old bridge.

There are two sets of pylons being constructed next to the old Bay Bridge.

A bit closer in on the construction.

Another group of pylons.

A slightly different view from Google Earth.

And another from Google Earth.

You can visit the eastern span of the Bay Bridge at Wikimapia or check out NewBayBridge.org, the construction website.

When we first reach the area around Venice, Italy, it can be a little overwhelming.

A lot of times when I am at a particular zoom level that is overwhelming, I will select “no places” in the “view” menu to make things a little less cluttered. When I get closer to Venice, I will go back and select “show places” or “upcoming places” (if I want to see everything).

Now I have zoomed closer in to Venice. When you find the place that you want to have a map of your your website, you need to decide how large you want the map and at what zoom level. I think this is a good size for what I want.

When I have the location that I want, I go to the “Wikimapia” menu and select “Map on your page”.

When that is selected, a movable selection box appears along with an information box that says: “To place a part of this map on your site or blog, move/resize the frame and copy the html code below to your page.”

Now I move the selector box (by dragging any of the small white boxes at the four corners of the box) to fit the area and size that I want. The html code is listed in the information box:

< iframe src=http://wikimapia.org/s/#y=45436888&x=12335587&z=13&l=0&m=s&v=2 width=460 height=267 frameborder=0 >< /iframe >

I then select and copy that html code. Whatever page you want it to appear on (in this case I will be posting it in this blog post) should be opened in whatever editor you use. When it is opened, paste the html code in wherever you want it to appear. Save your page and upload it (if needed). This is the result:

Notice that the selection I had enabled when I made the map will also show up. I had turned on “upcoming places” so those (along with all the official places of course) will show up. If I had wanted to turn off all place markers, I could do that.

I have zoomed closer in on Venice to Saint Mark’s Square and turned off the place markers. If I copy the code and paste it, I get this result (with the selections I made):

Another thing that could be helpful to some people or businesses would be to use a map instead of a satellite view (I will also leave places turned off, but you could have any combination of selections). In the “view” menu, select “Map”. This will turn your view into the plain map view. In some circumstances, using the “Hybrid” selection (which will use a combination of satellite imagery and plain maps) may be appropriate. Just using the map of Venice would produce this:

Once your maps have been produced on your website, they are functional just like Wikimapia is. You can navigate and zoom in and out as usual. Clicking a place marker will open a link that says “show info”. Clicking it will open up Wikimapia to that location.

Pretty cool functionality, isn’t it? You can visit Venice at Wikimapia or just use the maps above!

The Matt’s Wikimapia Blog “How To” Series:
How To #1: Adding a New Place
How To #2: Upcoming Places
How To #3: Pictures and Comments
How To #4: Adding Wikimapia and Google Maps to your Website
How To #5: YouTube in Wikimapia!
How To #6: Adding Polygons

The Forbidden City is really interesting I think. Right in the heart of Beijing, China, the Forbidden City houses the ancient imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties (built 1406-1420).

For this installment of Matt’s Wikimapia Blog’s Fun Places I will be using the Wikimapia layer in Google Earth for a slightly different vantage than the normal Wkimapia view. Click the images for the larger versions (which are really helpful for this post).

Even from this high altitude the square Forbidden City can be seen in the middle of the city.

Here we see the city with its moat clearly visible. The bottom left of the image (the South) is the center of the city with the Tiananmen Gate and Tiananmen Square.

To the South of the Forbidden City is Tiananmen Square and contains the Mausoleum of Mao and the Monument to the People’s Heroes (whose shadow can clearly be seen).

This vantage is the overhead view (with North on the right) showing how the Forbidden city and Tiananmen Square are oriented in relation to each other.

This is the Southern most gate, the Meridian Gate, looking North into the city.

This is a close up view of the Northwest corner of the Forbidden City. Among other things, the Supreme Harmony Hall and the Heavenly Purity Palace can be seen.

The Palace Museum, as it is now called, covers some 720,000 square meters with 800 buildings and is surrounded by a 6 meter deep moat. You can visit the Forbidden City at Wikimapia. And visit the Wikipedia article for other interesting information and links.

Click here to view Matt’s Wikimapia Blog FAQ.

I have a feeling a lot of Wikimapia and Google Earth users have visited the Egyptian Pyramids before, but I still think they are interesting and I am sure there are still many that haven’t seen them. I have also added a more modern version of the pyramids at the end of the post. (Images are clickable for larger versions.)

The Egyptian city of Cairo is in the northeast (upper right) corner of this image with the Giza pyramid complex residing in the southwestern (lower left) outskirts.

Zooming in closer shows the layout of the Giza pyramids. The Pyramid of Khafre is the large pyramid in the center square. The Pyramid of Khufu is the large pyramid in the upper right. The smaller pyramid in the lower left is the Pyramid of Menkaure.

Here we have a closeup shot of the Pyramid of Khufu or the Great Pyramid. It was completed sometime around the year 2560 BC and stands some 481ft/146m high although has lost about 30 feet due to erosion.

No, this isn’t a pyramid. This is the Great Sphinx of Giza, one of the largest single-stone statues on Earth. It resides in the east side of the Giza pyramid complex.

Wikipedia has a cool map of the area as well. Visit the Giza Pyramid Complex at Wikimapia.

Now I bring you to a modern day marvel: the pyramid of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Las Vegas seems to be a bit more crowded than Giza!

As we zoom closer in, the distinctive pyramid shape can be seen. While modern, this 350ft (106m) tall pyramid still isn’t as tall as Giza’s Great Pyramid. Like the pyramids in antiquity, a sphinx welcomes in visitors (can be seen on the east side of the pyramid).

The closeup image clearly reveals that this modern construction wasn’t made with back-breaking stones, but with steel and glass. Reflection from the surrounding buildings can be made out from this altitude. This pyramid contains an extremely bright spot light that points directly up from its peak. The sphinx, while white-washed, can be clearly seen as well at the eastern entrance.

Visit the Luxor Hotel at Wikimapia. So there you have two quite different versions of our world’s pyramids. Enjoy!