Platial News and Neogeography

GPS Enabled Chair Experiment

Blu Dot Real Good Experiment from Real Good Chair on Vimeo.

via @gabrielamadeus

Shoppingcartography.org

Shopping•cart•ography is a mapping activity that tracks where the things we buy are from. Intended for the home or workplace, this world map helps reveal the geography of our shopping in a fun and beautiful way. It is a kit that comes with a beautifully illustrated world map and color coding stickers.

The act of continuously building up the layers on a map that is integrated into your daily life is pretty great. It also might be a nice way to get rid of those little produce stickers that just seem to accumulate everywhere.

(Via @anselm.)

Mappy Blankies

It would border on negligence to not share these cozy quilted map blankets from Haptic Lab (via @caterina). While being able to get behind their mnemonic impact (especially if allowed to annotate), there is something a little dangerous about wrapping a child in a soft version of a neighborhood: kindergarten turf wars.

Important Notice about Frappr

This morning we started sending email out to Frappr.com members about the imminent retirement of the "Classic" Frappr Guest Map. To clarify, the "New" Frappr Guest Maps, that we created 2 years ago, and offer up from Platial.com/frappr, are safe.

If you are not sure which version you have, this should help.

CLASSIC:

NEW:

The backstory is that direct integration between frappr.com and platial.com could never get enough dedicated traction as it was never an emergency (oh startup life). A direct migration tool was under development and being tested but the lack of response from frappr power users basically killed the project. Many members cut their losses and just replaced their Classic maps with the updated New versions, leaving some significant amounts of data behind. We cut off the ability to create Classic maps about a year ago, but their use did not actually decline. We are still getting up to 500 new members a day through the 400,000 active widgets out there, but they just aren't sustainable cost-wise.

A few days ago we released a KML export tool that can be used to back up all the friends and images onto your desktop. You are strongly encouraged to archive your maps.

Today we are offering a new option for the truly loyal Frappr members, the ability to pay a small fee to keep ANY widget alive for the coming year. It doesn't have to be your own map, and you don't have to login to Frappr to initiate the payment. Just go to the map's homepage where you will see a huge yellow banner describing the process. The price is $24.99 and handled through PayPal (no account required here either, and yes you can pay with a major credit card). There is a payment deadline of Dec 31st, 2009.

For those of you who might have changed your email address, or who just want to see exactly what the email says I'm including it here:

To: Jason Wilson, Frappr member since 2007.

Two years ago Platial released an updated version of the Frappr Guest Map. Many Frappr members welcomed the change and replaced their old maps with the new ones. But many of you have not yet switched, in fact we still have more than 400,000 Classic Guest Maps still installed and active out in the world. The time has come to talk about your options as we start to retire the old version.

1. For those of you who are loyal to the classic style map, we are offering a simple payment option. $24.99 will keep your map alive and kicking for one full year. The deadline for receipt of payment will be January 1, 2010. At that time we will stop serving the maps.

2. For those who simply want to save their map data, we just released an export tool that gives you access to all the friends and photos from your maps creating a fully offline archive in the popular KML format right on your desktop. To use the exporter just look for the links on your map page on Frappr.com.

More information about both options can be found right on the http://frappr.com homepage.

Oh yeah, plenty of retro Frappr schwag still available.
http://www.zazzle.com/frappr*

Happy Mapping!
The Frappr & Platial Team

Exporting Archives of Frappr Maps

Today we are offering a new way to export and archive your "classic" Frappr maps for offline use. Classic Frappr maps are any maps that still talk directly to the frappr.com domain.

Just click on this badge from any embedded map:

Or go to the map page on frappr.com and look for this link:



(we have segmented the files into chunks of 1000 entries)

After the locations and images are all zipped up (this may take a while for image heavy maps, or if the servers are under heavy load) your download should automatically start and you may be offered a choice to save the file or to open it with an application.

These are fully self contained archives that can be shared or viewed offline.

The classic Frappr maps have been superseded by a more robust and efficient guest map available directly from Platial. Many Frappr users have already upgraded, have you?

Blue Monochrome

Every time you refresh the Blue Monochrome page, you get a new piece of ocean from Google Maps satellite. One of the nicest bits of Google Maps art I've seen

Map of Knight Rider K.I.T.T. Replicas

One of my new favorite maps is of the locations of people who loved the show Knight Rider enough to make custom replica K.I.T.T. cars and keep them around for more than 20 years. This is dedication. These are true fans. It's hard to imagine anything from today's world being nostalgically venerated like this in the year 2032.

Happy GIS Day/Geography Awareness Week From The Borders

The first time I was in Israel and the Palestinian Territories was July of 2009. (When I first met Waze).

Humanitarian mapping hero, Mikel Maron, asked me and Josh Levinger to host a cross border mapping party from Israel to the Palestinian Territories. Josh was already staying in Ramallah and I was eager to confront misguided assumptions created by Western media.

The result is a tour of Shu'fat Camp just across the border of East Jerusalem. The gps traces are on OSM, images and stories on Platial but is compiled here in Google Earth. This region is particularly interesting for those of us curious about borders; social borders, perceived borders, invisible borders, intimidating borders, physical borders. We'll be studying this simple few mile stretch and its border history for a long time to come. Its in border spaces that social mapping can be the most relevant. Geographic borders are untidy but the reality of cultural borders is a total and charming mess; dynamic, evolving, varying in size and shape based on interest, hobby or economics. So there are no distinct cultural boundary lines even where governments try to impose with walls, military and propaganda, but regions whose unifying interest has not yet have been uncovered. Social mapping can expose common ideologies, familiar places, ideas and perspectives so may be a tool for society to society diplomacy. Or more humbly, better neighborhood integration and shared resources within a single city. Each map created through border spaces becomes a bridge; an artifact to unite and identify sides.

Since it is very difficult for Palestinians and Israelis to cross borders, it seems important to put a face on what seems culturally remote. Its important to see the similarities as well as the differences; there are butchers, bakers and citizens living their lives. Our conversations and our travels can be inclusive.

I'll write more on this in other places but I wanted to share the work. Josh noted a project I had missed which was the Tourist Map of Gaza. Its a nice combination of maps for GIS Day and highlights neogeopgraphy as modest enabler of cultural diplomacy.

Happy Mapping!

What is Psychogeography Today?

Rich Cochrane explores the modern significance of psychogeography. Does modern psychogeography retain anything of the radical agenda of the 1960s? Should it? Does the term really mean much in relation to modern practice?

This conversation is taking place in London on Nov 7th 2009, more info here.

(Via @altnews_/.)

People-Powered Maps

Powered in a different way than Platial's people-power,Worldmapper has added some new countries to their maps showing country shapes distorted by population. Worldmapper has a lot of cool mapped data visualization. It is well-worth checking out. They have free PDF posters designed for printing, of all their maps, plus lots of other ways of using them. I would love to have a high-quality hardcover book of their maps for my coffee table.

via BBC News.