Using wikimapia to find shops and places in Kerala
It is interesting to see how some of the technology developments affect our daily life. One of the sites which I found very useful recently is the Wikimapia site based on google earth.
Last week I wanted to do some textile shopping. We usually visit Parthas shop in Trivandrum. This time I decided to look for some other shop and Ayyappas was another commonly heard textiles shop. But I had no idea where it was located. So I opened www.wikimapia.org and searched for "ayyappas textiles". Voila! The first result I got pointed to Ayyappas Textiles and I could see the complete route to the shop!
Wikimapia like wikipedia is surprisingly reliable even though it is publicly edited. There are some problems such as people not qualifying the places they add completely(For example, Ayyappas alone brings many entries without any reference to the place where it is located!). Another problem is that people have a tendency to mark their home much more prominently than useful public places. And lastly not all places are mapped. For example, the place I live is not on wikimapia.