Platial News and Neogeography

Platial 2006 Map Awards

This year nearly 15,000 user created maps were made on Platial. Topics range from world history to local food. Here are our biased picks for the Platial 2006 Map Awards. Disagree? Good, we love that. If you feel we missed a great map, please post it here in the comments since we had to literally drag ourselves away from four days of obsessive search, discussion and review. We're sure there are many fantastic maps that we didn't get to review so feel free to let us know.

Mapper Of The Year: Defines Mapumentary Genre

Baostar has created 37 maps this year. Each map brings the reader closer into the world as Baostar sees it. Each one uses place and map to share an insight about a specific facet of life. He documents place in a way that embodies neogeography, where human perspective and social interaction supercede latitude and longitude. Baostar has created a new genre which has inspired us all, that of Mapumentary.

Best Storytelling Map

Hopeless Romantic by Paiges

Best Local Guide

Roscoff, France by piotr

Taipei by narwal

Best Autobiogeography

20 jobs by jamesinger 

Best Food & Drink Map 

Taste of Wherever by queenkv

Taquerias of San Francisco by burritoeater

 Dive Bars by ddotcom12

Best Travel Journaling

mpoyser for his collection of Travel maps of Bratislava, India, Europe, South Africa, Malaysia & Singapore

Best Music Map
 Music You Should Hear by baostar
The Bike Bin Project by bikebin 

Best Architecture Map

 

 

The Londonist for their Stalking series of architecture tour maps including Erno Goldfinger, Jacob Epstein, Enzo Plazzotta, Colonel Richard Seifert and several others.


Best Real Estate Map

Real Estate Bubble Map by realestatecafe 


Best Indie Business Map


Where'd Ya Get That? by wendolyne

RecordStore Globetrotter by dsudorion 


Best DIY Map

 Maps of shops, makers, and places for Makezine, owned my makemapper, but originally created by Pauric O'Callaghan.


Best News/World Events Map
Catholicgauze's Atlas by catholicgauze


Where I was when 9/11Happened by edshepp 


Best Nature Map
World of Birds by kclama 


Best Local History Map

Portland's Historical Trolley Lines by tinzeroes


One City Block by rgalston

Palo Alto History by paloaltohistory


Best Activist Map

Chefs and Farms by tanabutler



Best Conceptual Map

Urban Palimpsest 2: The Mission  by MikeK



Best Video Map
San Francisco Treats by madamegonzaga
 Wish I was in Hawaii by u s3rname


Best Art Map
Knitta Bombs by knitta 


Best Blog/Published Maps
California by dylan
Yoga Studios in Los Angeles by ayogist

 
Best Game Map
Коды охоты "Шпионские страсти" by freeman
See blog post and comments


Best TV/Movie Map

Lost Places by burk504 


Best Big Map
  Truck Stops Map by aitaonline

Moleskine City Notebooks

Christmas shopping this week, I came across the new Moleskine city notebook and bought one (for myself). I was impressed and delighted by it.

Skimming Gridskipper, I noticed the video of artists' Moleskines from the recent Moleskine Detour exhibit in London. There are a few videos on Youtube, and you can get to them all from the exhibit website.

Also worth a peek is the Moleskine art site.

Polonium Map

Londonist strikes again with another great map. This time they mapped the polonium traces found in the investigation of Alexander Litvinenko's death. It's pretty interesting seeing the path. Thanks for the map.

Holiday MapKit

Watertown, MA residents are having some fun with MapKit, making a collective map of the holiday displays in their town.

The Winner!

Jasonbackus took the contest by storm, scaring away many contestants with his rapid fire annihilation of the list in the first few hours. A few would be players told us about their crushed hopes and dreams upon finding the contest over before it even began. I just had to tell them, "ya snooze, ya lose." :)

One other Platial member, Dmcox, wasn't scared by the utter impossibility of snagging the overall win, and went into one-up mode with a handful of markers that included the actual names of the hinted at Places! This was a courageous move, and one that the judges definitely took notice of. Dmcox did also manage to claim a winning move (and a prize) on item 5 and deserves an honorable mention for naming the Place on the game's intro, "Isle Royale".

The one missing item was #10, Galapagos Island Craters!

PRIZES

The prizes are taking a bit longer to prepare, and we don't really want to ruin the surprise, but we can give this little hint here:

In case you also didn't notice, with the link from the map detail of this game, map details can now host html (yes, even videos and images). This opens up a lot of doors for more and more game maps, so let's see em people, c'mon.

Eager Eyes - Data Viz

Robert Kosara asks

What would happen if you were to connect all the ZIP codes in the US in ascending order? Is there a system behind the assignment of ZIP codes? Are they organized in a grid? The result is surprising and much more interesting than expected.

Found this on thru Urban Cartography - thanks jlt.

Melting navigation systems - recall

What is up with batteries this year? One that may have some overlap with our readers is this car navigation system by Clarion, which is in recall as of yesterday.

Here is the brief info, or follow this link to the actual recall notice.

Clarion Recalls Vehicle Navigation and Entertainment System Batteries Due to Burn and Fire Hazards

Hazard: The lithium-ion batteries in these units can melt or overheat posing burn and fire hazards to consumers.

Name of Product: Batteries in Clarion N.I.C.E. P200 Navigation and Entertainment Systems

Units: About 2,500

Firm’s Recall Hotline: (800) 347-8667

Incidents/Injuries: Clarion has received four reports of the unit melting or overheating. No injuries have been reported.

You know who you are, go be safe.

MWAH & Happy Birthday to Platial!

by Tana Butler, Platial fan

Off the cuff. Repaying the dieties at Platial who brought me a way to hook up the things I love—all of which are intertwined. Never mind my own history, which extends past my birth year (1959, a very pretty number) but to that of my great-grandparents. And I can place my great-great-grandmother, Tranquilla Cathel O'Quinn, on her own land in County Cork, Ireland. (I haven't gotten to that just yet.) I do have family history on some of my maps.

I also placed a bunch of farmers—the REAL farmers, doing sustainable work for our very food—on a map with the chefs and restaurants who support them. Oddly enough, I'm not sure this Platial blog is the place to link that map. Or the one I did as a lark, when Platial held a (the more spare time the better) competition to link photographs with places.

There all all kinds of ways I can PLAYtial, if you catch my drift, and I have found this staff to be insanely committed (gosh, "insanely committed" would be a bad pull-quote, huh?) in the most generous way.

Thanks, Platial persons: the magnifient Tracy, Jason, Di-Ann, and maybe Paige and Jacob?

X O X from a fan.

Year One, Check

Here is an unstructured list of some of  my favorite moments of the past 365 days since Platial launched. This coming year will be full of even more surprises, distractions, disruptions, discoveries, learning, frustration and surely maps so thanks so much for journeying with us!

• Our first hackathon November 7-9, 2005 at the Jupiter Hotel with our brand new team Anselm, Chris, Tracy Catherine and special guests Poly 9 and the super smart web team at ESRI. My best friend Scott, even managed to make it to the kick-off. I should mention that I wish we had the energy to maintain life in a perpetual hackathon. We've had some brilliant hackers, academics, artists, UI folks and friends come to Portland over the year to help out with our major pushes. They're usually 3 or 4 days of super intense work where we make a giant step forward. Since then we've been fortunate enough to welcome Sayumi, Aaron, Rama, Tylor to the team and Rael and Stikkit team into our space!
• Getting funded by top-tier investors who believe in our mission, was the first validation that we were building something that could potentially benefit the world at large. We deeply want to create a post-geo-political picture of the world; a place where you can see into any part of the world through the eyes of its people. We have the chance to help each other navigate the world socially, irrelevant of big media and big politics. We have the privilege of working with some of the smartest investors who truly want to change the world.
• Launching Burnside. When we launched last year, the product codenamed Ankeny, after the first alphabet street in Portland, was riddled with bugs and inconsistencies. (I'm not saying they are all gone- building a mapping application is one the most challenging things I've ever done- even the folks at Google will probably tell you it's nontrivial.) Burnside, the second alphabet street in Portland was our first large improvement to the overall product which launched in February.
• In March/April, people really started to understand what we were trying to build with the People's Atlas. Some of the most inspiring example articulations of Platial were from Annalee Newitz who wrote about us in Wired, Engsan Kho who made us this video and Elizabeth Blair who created this piece on NPR.
• We've released a couple of applications this year that stand out as the things I am very proud of.  These have felt like a gift to ourselves and to our users. We feel like we're working for our users. It's hard to sift through all of the feedback and feature ideas and choose those we think will be a great resource overall. The two this year are Today Nearby (which needs some love and updates) and MapKit (which is getting a lot of attention at the moment and is on over 1000 new sites/blogs since we launched it a few weeks ago).
• Mapmaking. We started Platial because we've been making maps and psychogeography inspired art for a decade and when Google released their api it blew our minds to think we could do this every day with others who share the passion for mapmaking and neogeography. So late at night when we're making maps we'll spot others making maps too and sometimes it changes the way we view the possibilities. Baostar, Tracy The Astonishing always show me something new but so have Wept and Paiges who are incredibly good at putting personal feeling and story onto maps. Ayogist has shown us that we should focus on supporting the map publishing tools for bloggers, Tana that we can support local business, local farms and local food!  Hundred flowers, Placekraft, Dsudurion, the Londonist, all of the revolutionaries and us3rnam3 keep us excited about how cool the world is (and lots of others too). We've recently been hosting MapMaking tech craft nights and we even got to meet LA user scootdown in person at one of them.  I met the Mayor of Williamston mapping local history one night.
• We've met some of our most inspiring peers in person this year for example Mikel, Steve, Mike Liebhold, Schuyler Erle and Jo Walsh as a reward to attending too many conferences.
• Being (pleasantly surprised). Who doesn't love surprises? Well some that stand out are receiving some of those treats that Baostar is always placeblogging about, seeing Pauric's Make Magazine tabbed MapKit prototype and Tone made this Minimapper, Sayumi made Platial Tetris and the folks at Canwest inspired us to create a Pro MapKit for editors called Newsmapper.
• Great partners-- just a quick note of thanks to Jason and Jake, the other two co-founders not mentioned here who are working round the clock to try to make Platial the best social mapping application in the world. One day we will take a vacation ;-).
• For anyone who now thinks it's pathetic that I do not have a life outside of mapping, this year, my five year old daughter started kindergarten (I get to publish the school newsletter, taking tips from Parent Hacks), my two year old son learned to skateboard and Jason and I finally got hitched! It was a blissful three day wedding festival in the Oregon woods with lots of family and friends. It's worth noting that Erik and Scott give a great wedding sermon (The Sermon of Ideas), Caterina and Tracy are stellar tea maidens for any Wedding Tea Ceremony and that Chris and Donalda truly surprised us by placing real world Platial markers around the grounds for us to attach our stories to.
  

Thanks so much everyone. Onward!

Platial's 1st Birthday and another contest

To understate it, I'll just say that this has been an exciting year, but nothing compared to what's coming up this year.

While taking a screen shot of the special birthday marker,

I was inspired to create a little 'scavenger hunt' using the maps on Platial, just for today, just for fun, so if you have a few spare minutes, and if you feel familiar at all with the landscape of these maps, give it a go, there will be some swagorific prizes for the first person to get any of the Places, and a special prize for the person who wins the most Places.

Find the "How to Play" on the map itself. Remember, Make sure to stay on the map so your additions get on and can be counted.

Scan the list List then Get Started!

Item 1.

Item 2.

Item 3.

Item 4.

Item 5.

Item 6.

Item 7.

Item 8.

Item 9.

Item 10.

Good Luck!!