It’s a fact that Wikipedia has now entered our lives just like Google has. Despite a certain lingering mistrust of its user-submitted and hence potentially error-prone content, most people – including me – will probably seek information on Wikipedia after checking Google, or instinctively click on the Wikipedia link in the Google SERP right off the bat.

Wikipedia, however, still suffers from a major weakness: it lacks the support of quality photographs. In comes Fotopedia. The France-based project describes itself as "Images for Humanity". It’s an online encyclopedia of photos, organized in articles and subjects that tap directly into Wikipedia for their text content. In that sense, it positions itself right between Wikipedia and Google’s map-based Panoramio.

Fotopedia Screenshot

So users can create articles or add their own photo albums, and take an active part in shaping the encyclopedia by submitting and voting for pictures, either from other articles, their own Flickr account or their computer via the Fotopedia client.

The web site’s interface is quite attractive and does a nice job at keeping the photos in the limelight; this isn’t about textual knowledge but rather visual knowledge, and beauty. Here’s an example of a personal Bloody Bay Wall album which pictures’ now belong to the Little Cayman encyclopedia article.