You know, even though I work in the IT field and have worked for internet companies for almost 10 years now, sometimes technology as it relates to internet sites and usefulness never ceases to amaze me. The amount of information and its volume and ease of use currently at our fingertips in simply mind boggling.

As I reflect back to the early days and one of the first mongering websites on the internet, I think about the visionary called Atta and the original WSG. Since Usenet wasn't archived (at least until Google came along) he had the bright idea of taking Usenet posts and putting them on a webpage hosted at paranoia.com.

Therefore they WOULD be archived so that everyone could see them. Back in 1995 I was pretty young, had no money and the thought of traveling internationally for sex never really occurred to me. And if it did, I was too scared to do it given all the things I was completely naive about. I needed to achieve a certain comfort level before I could travel internationally and I hadn’t yet. Heck, I was concerned about even going to TJ and read about places in state. So I read about the massage places in Phoenix that offered (gasp!) handjobs. It wasn't until 1999 that I discovered Nogales thanks a very detailed Usenet post by Erip. A few months later I was across the border to Nogales, then on to TJ, then to Thailand and the rest is history. All thanks to the information on the internet, specifically the web.

But the problem all along since I first started looking for sex internationally was information. How is it collected and stored and how do you disseminate it to the masses. This has pretty much taken care of itself since 1995. Almost nobody uses Usenet anymore for sex travel information since most of the newsgroups have been overrun with SPAM. Everything is on boards like this. But then what about finding locations? Addresses? Etc.

One of the things I personally always like to do is at least try to know what to expect when I visit someplace new. Where is this brothel/bar/massage parlor/etc located. What part of town? How far it is from my hotel?

Well, we all know about the widespread availability of satellite images now. This technology still amazes me and Windows Live! has some incredible high res photos.

Take, for example, this picture of Petco Park in San Diego.

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=pfj4pk5736yn&style=o&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=6281278&encType=1

And you can even zoom in more if you like. Unfortunately, these high res photos like this only cover certain US cities.

Still, both Google and MS do a good job of covering many major world cities with other res satellite photos.

But here is another visionary. Not just satisfied to look at satellite images of cities, two forward thinking Russians started Wikimapia. Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev.

Now you can annotate (with satellite images from Google) the entire planet.

Here is Bangkok's Sukhumvit area.

http://www.wikimapia.org/#y=13741928&x=100551982&z=17&l=0&m=a&v=2

Although the JW Marriott and Nana Plaza are off a bit.

Here is AC.

http://www.wikimapia.org/#y=15166376&x=120583920&z=17&l=0&m=a&v=2

Here is Recoleta in BA.

http://www.wikimapia.org/#y=-34588315&x=-58394845&z=16&l=0&m=a&v=2

Here is Copacabana.

http://www.wikimapia.org/#y=-22978644&x=-43187792&z=16&l=0&m=a&v=2

Here is TJ.

http://www.wikimapia.org/#y=32537534&x=-117039016&z=17&l=0&m=a&v=2

Here is Makati and P Burgos Street.

http://www.wikimapia.org/#y=14563683&x=121029950&z=18&l=0&m=a&v=2

Anyway, just thought this was a really cool tool and wanted to share.

(Message edited by xenono on April 29, 2007)

Very cool.

Incidentally, any idea what happened to Atta? I heard some rumors he had died, although I suspect that was bull.

I also heard he protected his anonymity pretty well, so pehaps we will never know.

I have read speculation that maybe he died. I have no idea what happened.

I respected his principles for running his site. No graphics or ads of ANY KIND. Never tried to sell a thing.

His site was taken over when it's registration expired.

What are the web addresses to see video taken from street level of these places? I read a couple of years ago that such a project is underway for many places in the U.S. and European cities.