Friday 7 June 2013

Wikipedia is now 'Nearby'

Wikipedia has often been ‘the go-to website’ when you want to find out some information about a certain place, a celebrity or maybe even a film, but now they have débuted a new feature.

This new feature is called ‘Nearby’ and its main function is to recommend articles dependant on the user’s location. ‘Nearby’s’ main intention is to educate its user’s about their current surroundings.

For example, people visiting Vatican City will find articles about the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo’s fresco depicting The Last Judgment. This means that when you want to find articles related to your nearby location, you can simply find interesting things on your smartphone.

Not only will this new page from Wikipedia encourage people to find out about local stuff, but it also means that smartphone users can use their mobile device to take snaps for those articles that are missing an illustration. Wikipedia have said that they are looking out for active people to send in their photographs too.

In essence, it means that people will be inclined, and more likely to, take photographs of things that are local to them. If you take an image and see one of the nearby locative articles with an ‘Add an image to this article’ button, then all you have to do is upload your image and improve the information for other users. Although, it is worth mentioning that you can only do this if you are actually logged in.

Another thing that will be worth thinking about is location to location may vary in terms of the amount of articles available. By this we mean, London for example will have a lot more articles than say, the middle of the country. This, of course, is down to simple geography, the size of London compared to other cities and the fact London has a lot more going on in the city.

Although ‘Nearby’ is actually designed specifically for smartphone users, you can still access it from your computer. It is more likely to be used via a mobile device when people are out and about though, but it is still useful to know about when you are sat at home and interested in local articles.

2 comments:

  1. Hello guys,

    It is a really good idea! I just tried to find it in Play Store, but with no results. Is part of Wikipedia itself?

    Regards!

    /Cristofer

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Christofer

    It isn't a native App but if you browse to the Wikipedia website from your mobile then you'll see "nearby" in the menu (top left).

    Hope this helps

    Richard

    ReplyDelete