April 8, 2010
Internet, April 8, 2010. Yandex gives its users an opportunity to collaborate on People’s Map. Now, anyone can create and maintain a map of their hometown or any other familiar place.
In addition to drawing features like buildings, roads, points of interest, rivers and forests over satellite images, contributors can change or add more information to the objects that already exist on the map. For example, they can correct an inaccurately mapped building or give a street its name if it was missing. The accuracy and quality of these user-generated maps is verified and maintained by ‘people’s moderators’ – the most frequent and reliable contributors to People’s Map – each looking after specific locations within their expertise.
"We are positive that those who will benefit from and enjoy People’s Map most, are those living in the areas not yet covered by any online mapping service", says Andrey Karmatsky, the manager of People’s Map. "Our colleagues testing the service pre-launch, got so carried away drawing maps of, say, Krasnoarmeysk or Nalchik, that they had to be asked to stop and leave something for our users to map."
The People’s Map service offers high quality satellite images of more than 300 locations in Russia, Ukraine and other countries. And this number is constantly expanding. In addition to drawing a map of one’s own hometown, a user can sketch a map of Melitopol in Ukraine or Amsterdam in Holland. The service is currently in beta with an immediate plan to release API to allow users embed People’s Map into their own websites.
