This page is part of the Proceedings of Wikimania 2005, Frankfurt, Germany.

Geo-coding of articles and images

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License: Jens Kammann
Slides: Jens Kammann
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About the author & Abstract

Jens Kammann(*1971) studied communications at the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. After writing this master thesis the Information Systems Laboratory of Stanford University and subsequent stay as a visiting researcher he worked for a startup company in the field of broadband wireless access. Returning to Germany, he joined the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen. He works with the Institute of Communication and Navigation in the area of context aware mobile services and discovered Wikipedia as a comprehensive source of knowledge, way too precious to be retrieved just by "keyword entry" on the web. Instead, this information should be available wherever and whenever needed. Mobile wireless devices such es smartphones and PDAs solved the "wherever" problem - but "whenever" remains a challenge in consideration of the fact that from the wealth of information only an infinitesimal part of it is relevant to current situation. Since location information is a key component of an user's context – geo-coded information sources are one key to provide an user with just the information he needs in any given situation.

"Geo-coding is the process of assigning geographic coordinates (e.g. latitude-longitude) to street addresses, as well as other points and features. With geographic coordinates, the features can then be mapped and entered into Geographic Information Systems"[Wikipedia]

This presentation attempts to provide an overview of the current activities in this field but also wants to point out the limitations of the current wikimedia software when it comes to storing geo-coded information in text-based databases.

Information about DLR can be found at http://www.dlr.de/kn/

Information about a related research project “Heywow” can be found at http://www.heywow.com/