Fotopedia brings Heritage to iPhone and iPad

View historic photos on the iPad or iPhone.

The Fotopedia Heritage iPad and iPhone application from fotonauts uses 20,000 photos to illustrate the real-world locations of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites project.

The free app “offers a beautiful way to navigate and discover World Heritage sites,” the organizations say. “This application helps raise awareness about our cause and encourages everyone to ensure our world’s heritage is here for the next generation.”

“It is a new generation coffee table book,” Fotopedia says, “with more photos than a book could hold, and much nicer navigation. It reuses all the work we are doing on the encyclopedia, to inspire travelers looking to choose their next destination, and to protect World Heritage Sites. There is no end to the journey proposed by Fotopedia Heritage — there is no last page in this book.”

Fotonauts launched its “Fotopedia” web service two years ago, and says it helps photographers organize, upload, synchronize, and share photos.

Referred to as a Wikipedia of pictures, it also lets users add to their shots data from Wikipedia, Google Maps, and other sources. Users can publish their albums as Web pages from the service, and also search for photos under Creative Commons licenses with similar tags and add them to their collections.

Paris-based start-up Fotonauts says its primary product is  “is breathing new life into photos by building a photo encyclopedia that lets photographers and photo enthusiasts collaborate and enrich images to be useful for the whole world wide web.”