ShareMap is applying for Wikimedia Grant - please add your endorsement here
ShareMap.org is a social tool that allows to user to create maps on free licenses. Like Wikimedia projects ShareMap is collaborative tools - so anyone even without registration can modify map and add some features and fix some errors.
Here you can find examples of maps created with ShareMap available on Wikipedia Commons - category:Created_with_ShareMap
Map creation methods
To create map user can utilize data from multiple sources:
- Can draw directly on the map
- Can use Natural Earth dataset
- Can use OSM dataset via user friendly importer
- Can trace old raster maps
- Or can import his GPS tracks.
With all this method one thing is important - because all ShareMap maps are to be licensed on CC-SA license so the sources should permit to gather data on this license.
Available output formats:
- Interactive map displayed using Leaflet library
- Rendered SVG map
- Raw KML file that can be used in MediaWiki plugins
- Mobile application (beta version available for Android Platform)
ShareMap team believes that this tool will be also useful for WikiMedia projects contribitors - we are are very warmly open for your feedback - how you would like create the maps, what feature are missing, which things are to difficault.
KML as output
There is a community that encourage people to use KML embedeed into web pages. This is especially true for wikipedia task to create road or railroad articles. To go ahead to this requirements ShareMap offers easily workflow to create KML suitable to be displayed inside Wikipedia articles.
For example please take a look to this article: w:Pere_Marquette_(Amtrak_train) (please click to globe icon in the upper right corner of article)
We know that there is a plenty of free tools that are more powerful that ShareMap like open source GIS programs like Quantum GIS or Grass GIS. Our goal is to create tool that is easy and allows everyone to collaborate in common map creation.
You need some map but you don't know how to make it with ShareMap? Let us know, ShareMap contributors will help you with map creation and record screencast of creation process for further usage..