Before Africamap, while there are existing data on the internet regarding Africa, they were all very spread out . I.E. different organizations and groups tend to have different interests in Africa, such as political, environmental or female-related work. As a result, all these different "interest" africa data turn out to be very spread out across different websites instead of a distinct statistical data base comprising all the useful informations. Moreover, I realized that a lot of the existing data are in either book or journal formats; even when there exists computer data, they tend to be either table or essay format; comparatively, Africamap provides a much more "spatial" data base in digital format that could be easily interpreted and shared amongst classmates; I thought this "sharing" ability will turn out to be vitally important in further developing Africamap because there are many courses on Africa here at Harvard, so it would be great if everyone could have a space to collaborate all their research work!
Overall, I thought the most important characteristic of Africamap is the fact that we could combine Africamap with GoogleEarth and Map. It is amazing how we could download 3D data directly onto GoogleEarth; this is because that some people might be reluntant to learn a new program (I.E. Africamap), but the fact that we could directly download data onto GoogleEarth allows entry-level user to still manipulate it pretty well by using the GoogleEarth interface instead since we are already very familiar with this program. In addition to GoogleEarth, we can also re-import googleearth-edited maps into Google Map, this is also very important for me because I could then share edited work with my friends, creating another "inner-interface" for people with similar interest to share their research productions.
