Tagzania Blog | News and Announcements

We have read some users' feedback that Tagzania will be more useful when precise satellite imagery reaches to the locations that they cherish. That's obviously true. Most of the world's land surface is featured by Google Maps at a certain zoom level (level 3), and only specific areas show maximum resolution (zoom level 1).

But, well, we want to encourage users to tag and bookmark locations even without high resolution. We think that geographic bookmarks are also useful with that kind of satellite imagery. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Now you have low resolution, but imagery will be updated. It's happening already, and not only in emergency circumstances as it has happen with Katrina. See some reports about improved resolution as of mid-august. High resolution will come to your area sooner or later.
  

• In areas with low resolution, if there is a mapping option, then, the detail is great. That only happens in the US, the UK and Japan, but you can test the effect with these examples from San Juan de Puerto Rico.

The city's satellite imagery is not very precise, but street plans look wonderful, particularly at maximum zoom. Besides these three countries, it's clear that Google plans to add maps for other countries as well, as they extend the Google Local machinery.

Lorraine Twohill, of Google Local, confirmed it to the BBC recently, and and Miguel Reina, director of Google Spain, publically said that after Google Local for the US, then they would come the UK, Germany, Japan and Spain, in that order. Japan, apparently, went ahead earlier, but German and Spanish users will be surely served with streetplans soon. However, it's another country first, it seems. There's now Google Local for China, with street plans showing at bendi.google.com for 77 Chinese cities, although we haven't seen changes in the map display of Google Maps yet.

• And finally, the option to open other maps from the list interface of an item, is a good help for anyone. The satellite image of this point in Bremen, Germany, doesn't look that attractive, and there is no mapping at Google for it. But, try opening the Multimap and Mapquest links, and zoom into them. If you have tagged that location, and want to offer visitors a way to get at you, there's plenty of detail in those maps.
  

At the end, it's all about latitude and longitude. That's what you save at Tagzania, you bookmark your places. Views and background of those locations might be better or worse now, but they will improve over time, and, from Tagzania, we will try to offer as much valuable views as possible: satellite, maps, by Google Maps, or by other providers.