Mappit.ai — every place has a story: the world's news on a live, interactive map

Mappit — every place has a story

The world's zeitgeist on a map. Mappit turns the world's news into a living, interactive map. An always-on news engine continuously reads what is happening in nearly two thousand places — its own crawler, which reads the world's publishers directly and supplies more than nine in ten new stories, working alongside frontier AI from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI in the jobs a crawler cannot do — and pins each story to the place it is about, on an interactive, time-aware map of the planet. Zoom into any city and you see what's happening there right now — grouped by topic, colored by mood, drawn only from publishers that clear a reliability bar and weighted toward the most trusted, marked with how many independent sources found it, and with every source link checked so the stories you read actually lead somewhere real. Scrub the calendar backwards and the map replays how the world looked on any past day, because each day's record is kept rather than replaced.

On top of that news layer, Mappit adds live views of the physical planet — earthquakes, wildfires, air quality, and weather — and a market layer that plots stock movements at companies' real headquarters. A built-in AI guide named Marco answers questions about any place and cites its sources — the news there and, from an atlas of open data, its population, borders and statistics, each figure with its year and source. Seven map apps show the numbers beside the news: they color the world's countries and America's states, counties and congressional districts by the economy, population, health, conflict and the 2026 US elections, from open data, and play them back through time. Anyone can browse for free; a subscription unlocks the ability to create and share your own places, collections, and data layers. And AI assistants can read Mappit directly: add https://mappit.ai/mcp to Claude, ChatGPT or another assistant, free and without an account.

The core idea is simple and durable: place + time is the most natural way to organize what is happening in the world, and the value compounds every day as the record grows. The map is the interface; the permanent, corroborated, geolocated corpus of world events beneath it is the substance.

Mappit requires JavaScript for the interactive map. Every public place, pin, collection and profile also has a crawlable page — see the sitemap.

Baku, Azerbaijan

What's happening in Baku, Azerbaijan — 1,077 local stories, 0 community pins, live on the Mappit map.

Mappit's analysis

Geography & Setting

Baku sprawls across the western coast of the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan's capital and the Caucasus region's largest city. Perched on a peninsula jutting into the sea, the city commands a dramatic landscape: medieval Old City walls rise above modern high-rises, while the Absheron Peninsula's semi-arid steppe stretches inland. At sea level and below, Baku occupies one of the world's lowest-elevation metropolitan areas. The Caucasus Mountains loom to the west—close enough to shape the weather, as recent July rains remind residents.

History

Baku's story is layered: a medieval trading hub, a 19th-century oil boom town that transformed the global economy, a Soviet industrial powerhouse, and now a 21st-century capital reasserting itself regionally. The Old City, a UNESCO site, preserves Persian and Caucasian architecture. The oil wealth that built modern Baku is visible everywhere—in the Flame Towers' glass facades and the confidence of contemporary development—though the city has worked to diversify beyond petrodollars.

People & Demographics

With 2.4 million people, Baku is home to roughly a quarter of Azerbaijan's population. It's a Turkic-speaking, Muslim-majority city with a history of religious and ethnic plurality, though recent decades have seen demographic shifts. The city draws migrants from across the Caucasus and beyond, making it more cosmopolitan than many regional capitals. Young and ambitious, Baku's population drives the city's rapid transformation.

Economy & Markets

Oil and gas remain foundational—Azerbaijan's external public debt recently fell to $4.62 billion, supported by hydrocarbon revenues—but Baku is actively building alternatives. Finance, logistics, and tourism are growing sectors. The city positions itself as a regional hub connecting Europe and Asia, leveraging its Caspian location and improving infrastructure.

Culture & Character

Baku blends the ancient and ultramodern without apology. The Old City's narrow lanes contrast sharply with the Flame Towers and futuristic Heydar Aliyev Center. Culturally, the city hosts international conferences, media forums, and sporting events (this month alone: the European Free Pyramid Championship and the Shusha Global Media Forum). Tea culture, Azerbaijani cuisine, and carpet-weaving traditions persist alongside cosmopolitan nightlife and contemporary art.

Current Currents

July 2026 finds Baku in a moment of diplomatic and cultural activity. International conferences on media, decolonization, and cybersecurity have converged on the city, while parliament debates crowdfunding and tax reforms. These gatherings reflect Baku's ambition: to position itself not just as a capital, but as a convener and thought leader in the post-Cold War Caucasus.