Wikimapia! This is a very cool site and I have to thank Brad for sending the information on to me to investigate further. This site was created by Alexander Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev and was started on May 24, 2006. Their goal with this site is to "describe the whole planet Earth". This site is unrelated to Wikipedia and the Wkimedia foundation, but the creators say that they were inspired by Wikipedia. Unlike other wiki style systems, Wikimapia has no registered users and no administrative hierarchy. All users edit the site anonymously and there is nothing in place for monitoring or disciplining problematic users. Currently it list the 100 biggest cities in the world. This site is similar to Google Earth in allowing the user to zoom in on a specific area of the world. With Wikimapia, you can zoom in on a city of your choosing. I chose to look at New York city and when I went there I clicked on a box, which turned out to be Brooklyn. When I clicked on the box is brought up a synopsis of the city itself. It had a link to the city of Brookly, which when I clicked on that it took me to the Brooklyn city website where it had links for lodging, dining, attractions, guided tours and a calendar of monthly events. I think this could be a great tool for teachers if they are talking about a certain city that can be found on the site. The teacher could bring it up and they can zoom in and get a virtual tour of what the city looks like and how it relates to other cities in the same state. Here is the link to check it out for yourseleves and explore a city of your choosing!
www.wikimapia.com Have fun!