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joris
Moderator
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# Posted: 6 Jun 08 23:51
Reply
Of course we at Woophy don’t have the illusion that we can compete with Google. There are probably more than 100,000 websites on earth which are bigger and more significant than Woophy, and Google is definitely one of them.
But in the past three or four years we had the illusion that we were much better in showing a large number of pictures/information on the map than Google. We could show more than 2,000 dots on our map while Google maps (not Earth) only showed a limited amount of information (dots) on their map. In fact Google did not even show photos on the map.
The good news for Google is that they finally caught up with us. The new Google maps is now able to show really huge amounts of pictures, take a look here. We have to admit that it works really smooth and very precise.
Does this mean that Woophy lost its reason of existence? Well we don’t think so, we think that the meaning of Woophy is our community of dedicated and talented photographers (you!) and the high quality and significance of the pictures on the site.
If you like to discuss about the significance of Woophy in comparison with Google and Panoramio please share your thoughts in this topic.
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A.Miguel Oliveira
Member
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# Posted: 6 Jun 08 23:58
Reply
"Does this mean that Woophy lost its reason of existence?" OF COURSE NOT!!!
Google is a great for general searching, but we feel a impersonal linkage to the result of it!
Woophy works like a big Family, where we can make friends day by day!!!
Long life to Woophy!
Hugs and kisses from Porto,
Miguel
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Nivad
Member
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# Posted: 7 Jun 08 00:20
Reply
Personally I fear this can become a struggle like the one were david fought goliath except that in this particular fight goliath will win...
But yet does woophy certainly not loose its reason of existence. For concurrence reasons for instance, concurrents keep each other sharp and that is a good garrantee for quality.
Grtz
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Marcos
Moderator
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# Posted: 7 Jun 08 06:24
Reply
I think Joris is not saying this is the end of Woophy or something related because this is not the end, not even switch point.
@Miguel: I agree on what you say about Woophy, we are like a family. Anyway I will have to disagree with you about Google, maybe you see Google as a search engine, maybe the better and best known search engine ever existed. Nowadays Google is much more than a search engine, it has buyed many of the most popular sites as youtube, myspace, facebook and twitter, all of them are sites that have millions of visits per day and generate millions per minute as well as they cost millions per minute (which only Google can afford). This has made Google to grow in gigantic steps, Google is nowadays very close to MIcrosoft size and amazingly competitive for Yahoo, Yahoo is older than Google.
About Google Maps, it has been since it started a service which provides simple maps and satellital maps, it purpouse was never to create a db of pictures where amateur and professional photographers can post pictures and comment them as well as have ratings and forums where to debate. This is still true, Google Maps - with Panoramio - is stil not even similar to Woophy, it only similarity with Woophy is the map full of pictures. The real purpouse of Panoramio is to have pictures (not too many) from each part of the world but users can not transmit to the photographer how beautiful his/her picture is, it is just not possible in Panoramio.
Because of what I have mentioned I think Woophy is still "unique", at least till Google adds some new features to Panoramio as comments, ratings and forums, please let me know if this happens. 
Regards.
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SilviaO
Member
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# Posted: 7 Jun 08 15:44
Reply
ABSOLUTY AGREE WITH MIGUEL!!
LONG LIFE TO WOOPHY!!
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1LOP
Member
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# Posted: 7 Jun 08 16:44
Reply
Two thumbs up to Woophy.
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Ormond
Member
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# Posted: 7 Jun 08 18:45
Reply
Hi Joris.
This is just a suggestion and please do not take offence (I think of the saying we have here in Ireland "If you can not beat them, join them). Maybe you can make an arrangement with Google to provide a link on the Google map to the Woophy site so that if people want to see more pictures of that particular location they can be directed to us. This is the only site along side Google that uses the map as the basis to display pictures. This would bring more people and members to this site: is it possible to do this I wonder? It is just a thought
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zerega
Member
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# Posted: 9 Jun 08 13:40 - Edited by: zerega
Reply
I find the google map a bit crammed with all these photos. I like woophy's dots-on-map more.
But the biggest advantage of the woophy system is that the map is searchable and the dots vary their colour with the quantity of found items. E.g. you want to find all white beaches on earth? Simply type in white beach in the search tab and there you are. And it would be even better if you could do an AND search to make searches even more exact. (Wishlist!)
The interface design of both, panoramio and flickr is rather crap. It's more fun to move around woophy. Very stylish. However additional map layers would be nice. At least something like that what google calls terrain view.
What flickr and Panoramio do very much better is sorting images by interestingness and they do so mainly, because being active in the community (i.e. on-line-buddies-regularly-viewing,-commenting-and- favouriting) is only a tiny part in determining whether an image is good.
Roughly speaking, flickr does it around the idea of who is looking at your pictures from where, how and when and what he's doing with the image (commenting, putting-on-a-note, favouriting, downloading, blogging, continuing with your photostream, contacting you). Your buddies' activities count lower towards an image's interestingness than some anonymous guy doing a search for something specific and then finding your image. Obviously it was interesting to him/her and that without even knowing you.
Oh, and tags/keywords are VERY important. 95% of all views come through keyword searches!
So generally, i use
- woophy for the pure pleasure of browsing the world map and viewing photos and to have an on-line representation of my pics from some 20 years of travel so that everybody who went along has access to the photos neatly spread out on the map.
- google maps\terrain because it has got the best map look-and-feel. I wish its old-school mate, the best hard copy atlas around, Bartholomew (Times in its native U.K., Knaur its German licensee) would look like it.
For the other tabs, google's satellite imagery is mostly an ugly sludge of spinach acre and the map is still rather rudimentary in remote regions.
- yahoo maps\satellite because yahoo has done a much better job in finishing it's satellite imagery. A beautiful representation of our earth's surface, especially in the colourful desert regions. I used some printouts along Argentina's Route 40 and the similarity of the coloured mountains was striking. flickr images can be mapped and seen on yahoo maps from within flickr in a pretty smart way. But thats only a minor function and few people geotag their images on flickr.
- flickr for specific image searches. Forget search engines, flickr has everything you might looking for, whatever remote. Their photo upload count varies between 1500 and 3000 images uploaded per minute. So their sorting-by-interestingness-thingy must be DAMN good since my flickr searches aren't flooded at all by the tons of cats, flowers, sunsets, boobs, bums, and friends-and-family pics mostly uploaded.
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Izydor
Member
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# Posted: 28 Jul 08 14:32
Reply
I think the Woophy is unique in its dedication to the beauty of photography. It is for lovers of photography and let it remain as such!
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Dieuwertje
Member
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# Posted: 28 Jul 08 16:14
Reply
Of course Woophy will stay, it's one big family with thousands of friends !!!!!!!!!!!!!
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zerega
Member
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# Posted: 30 Jul 08 12:25
Reply
I had hoped that this thread grabbed a bit more interest. Come on, woophy's map with its spread of photos is the core of the whole site. More opinions please!
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pansa
Member
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# Posted: 31 Jul 08 14:11
Reply
My photo sites are:
Woophy for the fun and community. I don't care too much about the map which I hardly use.
Flickr and Panoramio for giving my friends easy access to selected maps of photos.
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ortho158
Member
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# Posted: 31 Jul 08 16:18
Reply
I used to look a lot at the map, and I am not doing it anymore: just because of those **** cropped thumbnails.
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3.1416
Member
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# Posted: 31 Jul 08 16:40 - Edited by: 3.1416
Reply
I use the map, and search by member and new members page, only one thing disturbe me, the google publicity, I think sometimes is not really good advertising because there is someone that I consider her to be a machist and degradingly as the some countries. An example if you search a new member call savostin appear by default in my computer publicity like.
Ukrainian Women
For serious relationship only. Join now (it's free).
Single Ukraine Ladies
Ukrainian girls and women are looking for dating with foreign men
Beautiful Ukraine Wives
Beautiful Ukraine Women Seek Dating And Marriage. Join Free Today.
8000+ Girls from Russia
The biggest choice of serious Girls Watch Picture profiles online
Do not believe that I am a conservative, but it seems to me that a site of photography might have better advertising.
Best regards.
Sergio
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giz
Member
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# Posted: 31 Jul 08 19:17
Reply
I often do a search on the map, especialy when I am interested to go somewhere, and about the adds, sergio, i don't think woophy has a choice which adds appear, they are all google adds. and internet displays such things.
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david moran
Member
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# Posted: 20 Aug 08 06:33
Reply
i agree with izydor long live woophy
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