To say that mobile has been a huge boost for Wikipedia would be an understatement according to a post from the site today, saying that its 2-month-old Android version alone has accounted for 23M page views per month, with 2.25M installs to date.

Today, the Wikimedia Foundation has released updates for both iOS and Android versions and the features are jampacked. The glaring new feature is the fact that Wikipedia has opted to ditch Google Maps in favor of OpenStreetMaps for its popular “nearby view” feature. This is a growing trend for companies, as we’ve seen both Apple and foursquare opt for the open source alternative as well.

The reason behind the move has to do with support for as many devices as possible:

Previous versions of our application used Google Maps for the nearby view. This has now been replaced with OpenStreetMaps – an open and free source of Map Data that has been referred to as ‘Wikipedia for Maps.’ This closely aligns with our goal of making knowledge available in a free and open manner to everyone. This also means we no longer have to use proprietary Google APIs in our code, which helps it run on the millions of cheap Android handsets that are purely open source and do not have the proprietary Google applications.

While that’s bad news for Google, it’s great news for companies who want to put its own spin on the geographical data that it shows within its apps.

Along with this change, Wikipedia announced the following updates:

Wikipedia for iOS

All of the changes in this update are to bring the iOS version up to speed with its Android counterpart:

- Search suggestions
- Full text search
- “Did you mean?” results
- Saving pages for offline viewing
- Share pages via Twitter, Facebook
- Save pages to Read It Later
- Read current page in other languages
- Map integration to view nearby articles
- View location of current article + nearby articles in a map
- Set the default language
- Navigation history features

➤ Wikipedia for iOS

Wikipedia for Android

The Android update is more about feature requests and bug fixes, since this is the first major update since the app was released two months ago:

- Quick Search Bar integration
- Open Wikipedia URLs from any application using the Wikipedia app
- Full Text Search and ‘Did you Mean?’ correction support
- A much better tablet interface
- App can be moved to SD Card
… and plenty of bug fixes!

➤ Wikipedia for Android

Wikipedia also says that its moving to a faster development cycle, 2 weeks to be exact, so you can expect more features and updates to hit your devices soon.

One of the handiest features of Google Maps is that it uses real-time traffic data to tell you how long it will take to get from point A to point B. Without that feature, every ride would probably take 20 minutes longer than you anticipated, depending on the time of day and conditions on the road.

The company first rolled out the feature in 2008 and has worked to expand the locations that it covers. A big part of the coverage area has to do with people participating in “crowdsourcing” their location data when they’re driving somewhere. When you use Google Maps on your mobile device, it gives constant updates to the company on your progress. Google then crunches all of that data to accurately predict traffic conditions in near real-time.

The Maps team has announced that it now has traffic condition coverage for Norway, New Zealand, and Hong Kong to go along with the United States and 13 other European countries.

Using Google Maps on a mobile phone running Android is a huge selling point for the device, but it appears that Google might be losing its foothold on running the Maps app on iOS.

The mobile version of Maps runs seamlessly in the browser though, so have no fear.

I’ve found that Google Maps does a pretty good job predicting traffic unless there’s a major accident, in which case there’s pretty much nothing any company can do to keep you in the know on how long you’re going to be sitting still in your car.

Maybe one day when Google’s self-driving cars hit the market, we’ll never have to worry about checking out maps or driving ever again.

Since people are also searching on YouTube for her videos and posting them on Twitter and Facebook, one developer set up a site that allows you to follow her musical career and journey, complete with videos and embedded on a Google map.

The site is called “Whitney Houston’s Journey Mapped” and when you visit the site it will automatically hop from location to location with embedded videos of her most famous appearances and performances:

The site takes you through Whitney’s journey as a performer in chronological order and serves as a wonderful and thorough digital homage to her career.

You can click the arrows on the site to travel through the journey manually, watching each video as they come up. If you’re a music fan or a Whitney Houston fan, this site is definitely worth a few moments of your time.

➤ Whitney Houston’s Journey Mapped

If you’re a heavy foursquare user like I am, you know that your check-in data from over the years is pretty interesting to look at. While it’s extremely interesting, you might not have known how useful it could be. Part of the reason for that is because foursquare has focused on creating a killer app that allows you to log all of the places you visit for yourself, and for your friends.

Today, foursquare took a gigantic leap forward by bringing its “Explore” offering to the web. Last November, the company gave its website a huge facelift by making foursquare places look prettier and easier to discover. This release goes way further than that, finally turning all of that check-in data into a real actionable web experience.

By pulling together its 1,500,000,000 check-ins, “tens of millions” of tips, and over half million lists, foursquare has now become more of a complete service. Here’s what the company had to say about Explore for the web:

Finally, because Explore is powered by check-ins and foursquare Tips, it’s not just personalized, it’s specific. Search for ‘pool table,’ or ‘guacamole’; ‘deep dish,’ or ‘thin crust.’ Because not all bars, Mexican restaurants, or pizza joints are created equal, and we want to make sure you find what you’re craving.

As the company has made efforts to make it easier to not only check-in, but share tips and specific information about a location, that data can now be used in any number of ways. We’ve already seen it in action with mashups like FoursCrowd, that predicts how busy a particular spot might be.

When you visit Explore on the web and login to your account, you’re presented with a map and search options. It now becomes a community driven and extremely social version of Google Maps, and also a way better offering than Google Places.

The results themselves display in a way that makes all of the data you and your friends have given over the years seem worthwhile. If you’re looking for pizza in your area, you’ll be shown a map of all of the local places, along with information about them on the left. It’s not just information pulled from businesses or Yelp, it’s information that matters to you. You’re shown which of your friends have checked in, as well as pictures and tips about the venue.

It’s as if this was foursquare’s master plan all along. To provide a rich experience like this, you need massive amounts of data. Phase 1 was the app, which brought the company that data. This phase brings everything together in a way that absolutely blows Google’s properties out of the water. Why? Because when you search for Places on Google, there’s not much information there.

While foursquare has done deals with media properties for promotional purposes and specials with companies like American Express, this is the type of product that is easily monetizable. For example, foursquare could simply sell a premium listing that would show at the top of the results, much like Google does.

By pulling all of our data together and presenting it to us in this useful fashion, foursquare has somehow found a way to make us want to use its service more often. Google on the other hand hasn’t found that “hook” as of yet with its social properties.

➤ foursquare Explore

A few weeks ago, I wrote about an app that showed Wikipedia updates in real-time. The information flew by quickly in a stream, showing exactly how active the site is with updates and edits.

If you weren’t impressed with that, then you should definitely check out WikipediaVision.

The app shows updates close to real-time, but plots them on a Google Map showing how truly global Wikipedia is. One second, there’s an updated in Philadelphia, the next there’s one in Paris. It’s even more mesmerizing than watching a stream of text.

Around the world in 3 Wikipedia edits

This is another one of those fun apps that is great to set up on a second monitor that surely beats a boring screensaver.

WikipediaVision gives you the location of the edit, as well as a link to the actual page. It’s unlikely that you’ll click all of the edits you see, it’s quite interesting to see the difference in the type of pages that get edited in each corner of the globe. After watching the app for five minutes, I saw quite a few Wikipedia updates on television shows in the United States.

While WikipediaVision isn’t fully real-time, it’s pretty close. Get ready to lose at least 15 minutes of your productivity upon first glance. Visualizations like this really put the importance and scale of Wikipedia into context.

➤ WikipediaVision

This is a ridiculously cool and unique usage of Google Maps’ API. Developer Brad Thompson aims to launch a platform where you can not only see what city blocks looked like in the past, but you can view what businesses inhabited the city long before you lived there. That platform is Pastmapper.

Putting old city listings and directories on top of the Google Maps API, Thompson gives an old world a new life, thanks to technology.

Here’s how Thompson explains Pastmapper:

For quick access to realtime information, (photographs, Tweets, business listings, weather, voting results, etc.), online maps are incredibly powerful tools. The more realtime the information is, the more valuable it is, and maps are in a constant state of being updated to keep up with the world. These tools are generally suited for answering a question that begins ‘What is happening?” or “What just happened?”. A few amazing examples of current data on maps are Eric Fischer’s racial distribution maps, the Oakland Crimespotting map by Stamen Design and the New York Times Hurricane Tracker.

But what if your real interest is what happened further back in the past? Online maps today simply add layers of information onto today’s map. Pastmapper is a first step towards answering ‘What was here?’ or ‘Whatever happened to..?’, by delivering a map, not just a data layer, that takes a fourth-dimensional view.

San Francisco in 1853

The first map released on Pastmapper is San Francisco in 1853. You can click around on the markers to get information about the businesses that were there during that time. Everything from bakeries to liquor stores are shown in an extremely condensed portion of San Francisco. If you click the button to see the map in 2011, you’ll see how many streets and detail have been added to the city since the 19th century.

The project is fascinating and hopefully Thompson continues to add more cities, as the power of publicly available information can help recreate experiences long before there was a Google Maps API to build on top of.

➤ Pastmapper

If you’re planning a trip to Las Vegas and want to get a real feel for what it’ll be like once you’re there, Google Maps is bringing more dimensions to its service. Three to be exact. The Google Maps team announced today that its rolling out 3D Maps in select cities all over the globe.

Here’s what the team said about today’s release:

Google Maps continuously works to bring you real-life 3D representations of your favorite cities from around the world. Google Maps in 3D combines a functional map with stunning visuals. You can tour an increasing number of cities in 3D and experience the streets and sights right from your computer or Android device.

Since embarking on our 3D mapping efforts, we have amassed a collection of cities that allows you to feel like a jet-setter. We have recently expanded and improved this collection to include more cities in Japan, Europe and the US, to name a few. You can experience a few cities below.

Check out Las Vegas and Rome:

These are the other cities that are available for a 3D tour on Google Maps:

US: Foster City, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Norfolk,Palo Alto, Portland, Redwood City, Riverside, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Sunnyvale.
Europe: Rome, IT, Rotterdam, NL; Seville, ES; Stuttgart, DE, Amsterdam, NL

Along with street view, the amount of detail you can now get from viewing Google Maps is astounding, and the team keeps adding more things to make checking out a map an experience that you can almost touch.

The best advertisements are the ones that are so cool you don’t even care if you’re being advertised to. This Peugeot RCZ promotion is one that does a brilliant job of showcasing a new vehicle on the market as well as giving us something cool to play with.

On top of what appears to be a pretty nifty car, the site RCZView lets you put a start point and an end point on a map, and the site uses Google Street View images to stitch together a stop motion animation of the route.

Creating your own is simple, just put in the addresses and give the site a minute or two to create your route.

Once you’ve entered the coordinates, you can watch the animation which shows up as a full-screen animation that is stitched together so well it looks like a video. It’s a fantastic usage of the Google Maps API.

Check out this video demonstration:

You’re given a URL to share the route with your friends, which of course serves as more advertisement for the Peugeot RCZ, but it’s so cool you won’t even care about that.

If all of that wasn’t cool enough, the site retains all of the routes entered and allows you to browse through them and watch each animation. It’s a time-waster, sure, but it’s quite fascinating to see different neighborhoods in the world as if you were driving through them yourself.

Companies, agencies, and marketers take note, this promo is so sweet and so well done, the fact that it’s an advertisement doesn’t even matter. And for that reason, this baby can go crazy viral.

➤ RCZView

If you’re a Nirvana fan, you’ve probably spent hours upon hours scouring the Internet looking for every piece of footage available on the band. The site A World Of Nirvana has taken the grunt work out of enjoying rare concert footage of the band from the entire life of their career together.

The app uses the Google Maps and YouTube APIs to collect concert footage broken up by each year and pulled and shown on the location the event happened.

Simply choose your year of interest, pick a location, and the video is shown directly from YouTube. Some of the videos are super compressed full versions. The quality of the videos aren’t the best, but there are shows that I’ve found here that I didn’t know existed on YouTube.

Even if you’re not a huge Nirvana fan, you’ll find surfing around the map and picking a random show to check out to be fun. Hearing the band’s sound get tighter over the years is impressive for any fan of music to watch.

➤A World Of Nirvana

According to its creator Tom Jenkins, here’s the story of the bored toy seeking adventure:

A lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross-country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View.

Enjoy this extremely beautiful video with amazing music, reminiscent of the whimsical fun we’ve seen in the Toy Story movies: