WikEye – Using Magic Lenses to Explore Georeferenced Wikipedia Content

Traditional paper-based maps are still superior in several ways to their digital counterparts used on mobile devices. Namely, paper-based maps provide high-resolution, largescale information with zero power consumption. Digital maps offer personalized and dynamic information, but suffer from small outer scales and low resolutions. In this paper, we present WikEye, an interdisciplinary project that demonstrates proof-of-concepts of three novel research ideas related to this topic: multi-dimensional interaction with a magic lens device, spatio-temporal Wikipedia data mining, and magic lens markerless tracking. Through its integration of the advantages of static and dynamic maps and its employment of Wikipedia as its primary knowledge repository, we envision WikEye being used to address mobile technology issues in the tourism and education fields. In particular, we focus on the need for effective tourism-related mobile technologies and the demand from educators for new methods that students can use to interact with information.