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I'm sorry, this is just incorrect by somebody who either hadn't fully used Encarta / Compton's, or doesn't remember them. I have been looking for 5+ years for
by NikolaNovak 7y ago
I'm sorry, this is just incorrect by somebody who either hadn't fully used Encarta / Compton's, or doesn't remember them.
I have been looking for 5+ years for a tablet or PC "Atlas" which can easily, with a click of button, show me graphs, or colour regions, based on specified criteria such as political types; economy; climate; productivity; and other interesting stats.
Wikipedia articles are horribly inconsistent about format and details they use for different geographic regions. They are even worse at showing overviews, especially across categories and regions. It takes me hours to gather info I'd get in Encarta in a few clicks, at which point I give up. Google Maps doesn't have any of these markings / mappings easily accessible; and neither is trivially accessible offline.
This is not to say Google Maps and Wikipedia aren't AWESOME - because they are; and I wouldn't dream of replacing them with Encarta for 99% of things. But there are significant use cases which have been lost and not replaced with anything of equal ease of use.
FWIW: I'd pay $50+ right now for a good off-line atlas. All I can find in app stores when I search for "Atlas" is scans of maps :S
- ghaff 7y agoThere is Brittanica Online if you want an edited encyclopedia. And Rand McNally has an online atlas--though I don't have any personal familiarity with it. There's also ESRI.
- mey 7y agoYou can download the CIA World Factbook, but it isn't an app, nor does search work offline. It is basically a scrape of the site. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/download/ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/download/
- SanchoPanda 7y agoInterestingly, 2017 version: 170 mb 2018 version: 1.6gb
- CamperBob2 7y agoSeems like Google Earth is a better match for your interests than Google Maps. I don't know if it's still actively maintained, though... you don't hear much about Google Earth anymore. Not new and shiny and disruptive enough, I guess.
- daveslash 7y agoA huge portion of Wikipedia data is from the CIA's World Fact Book, which is public information. I wonder if combining that with a 3D rendering of the globe could be a viable product...
- dredmorbius 7y agoCitation requested.
- darkhorn 7y agoClosest thing might be Wolfram Alpha.
- basch 7y agoOne thing nicer about Encarta than Google+Wikipedia was for the most part being able to skip past the "is this trustworthy" step. Critical thinking is important, but the need for defaulting to distrust was less.
- pastage 7y agoEven as a young teen in the eighties I never understood that part of maps, they are so shallow and prone to bias. Even just creating a map with only on the ground facts is always biased, there is always bad editorialization. I never used Encarta, so it might be great, but you can get better data today at the cost of being harder to use. But a lot less bias. That said maps are cool, and they are still really expensive, even with http://openstreetmap.org http://openstreetmap.org and https://www.naturalearthdata.com https://www.naturalearthdata.com