Platial News and Neogeography

Good News For Wordpress Bloggers

We updated Platial yesterday with one nice new feature for Wordpress bloggers. You can now put your existing Platial maps on Wordpress. The Platial mapkit widget has been in the Wordpress gallery for a while now, but until yesterday you could only put a fresh, new, empty map up. Here's how to take one of your existing maps full of your favorite places, and put it on your Wordpress blog:

1. Log on to Platial.com
2. Under your map title on your homepage, or in the map header, click on "embed" or "publish."
3. Choose the Wordpress logo and click next
4. Copy the code into the widget control panel on Wordpress.

We had a lot of people write in to tell us that they found the new markers too gigantic, so we reduced their size by 25%. Let us know how you like the new size. We also made some bug fixes this week. Some images weren't appearing in hovers and in the flash image scroller, but they should reappear. Maps on blogs should also stop showing the whole world instead of the area where your markers are in IE7.

Thanks to everyone who sent us in feedback this week. We love to hear from you!

New Feature: Zoom to Location

Last week we updated the site and added back in our old "Zoom to Location" tool. This is a really useful tool if you are looking at a big map that has a lot of markers on it all over the world and you just want to see what is close to you. You can type in the name of your city or plug in your zip code to jump the map over to the spot you need.

This tool is also extremely useful if you are adding places by clicking on the map. You can put in an intersection or an address near what you want to add and the map will center in on the area you need.

There were several small bug fixes in this deploy, and a big fix for Wordpress mapkits. We are working on making it possible to put your existing maps on your Wordpress blogs and should have that feature out soon.

We have had a lot of great feedback since our redesign, including congratulations, bug reports, and feature requests. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to contact us, leave comments here on the blog, or post on our forum or the Wordpress forums. We sincerely appreciate it.

Mapping the Evil Red Gas of Traffic

A darkly abstract visualization of traffic density by zip code

Traffic Sketch 2 from Mark Chadwick on Vimeo.

New! Improved!

Flanders
We are so excited to unveil our newest release. Excited isn't even the word. We are giddy. Those of you who have known us for a long time already know this, but we name each versions of Platial after the alphabet streets of Portland, Oregon, in order. It is with great pride that we introduce to you the new Platial, aka Flanders. 

We Look so Fancy!
Our new sharp looks come from the creative mind of Matthew Stroh, who is going to continue to bring on the shiny as the newest member of the Platial team. We also owe the success of this redesign to our fresh new Lead Engineer Chris Henderson, who has helped us get our act together since coming on board a couple months ago. Everyone on the team has worked really hard on this deploy and deserves to bask in a little ray of glory. Here's an overview of what the new Platial has in store for you.

More Publishing Options
Now you can auto-embed either a flash map or a javascript map onto your favorite blogging sites and we've added more auto-install options because what the world needs now is less cutting and pasting.

More Advanced Features in Your Map Set Up
Block people from commenting on the Places on your map--for those who don't want to know what other people think!

Review places before they appear on your map--a must for those who put their open maps out on Facebook and Myspace!

Map Navigation to the Max

Show Don't Tell
The categories in our new map legends make it easy to see what kinds of places are on the map at a glance. We are slowly working on categorizing all of the Places on Platial. 

Save Your Spot!

Knowledge is Power
Map details put all the information and stats about the map right up front.

New Hovers Give You More

Where Was I?

Where Do I want to go Now?
The recommendations tab will always have good ideas about where to look next.

We're Not Done Yet!
The bulk upload tool is being rewritten and will be back in your add place tray very soon. The slider is also missing from the new design for now. We'll soon make it possible for you to change the categories of the places you added in the past and which our robot might have mis-categorized. Keep your eyes peeled for frequent updates and be sure to write to us so we can make your Platial dreams come true. All our best ideas come from you!

Shout Outs
We had a lot of extra help pulling this together and we want to thank everyone who was a part of this big deploy. Our helpful, inspiring, domineering creative directress who shall go mysteriously nameless was our main inspiration. Platial beta tester club members who helped test this include Stormy7g, Ayogist, Rekha6, Scootdown, and Raju0704. Michelle Rowley, David Knape, and J Chris Anderson pitched in on the technical side. Pauric O'Callaghan finally gets to see some of the flows he helped us work out in action. Bob Kim didn't work on this deploy directly, but way, way back long, long ago he helped working out some of the ideas that we've finally been able to implement here. We also need to give a big thanks to the very understanding Platial families (our spouses and children) who put up with us working some long hours. Thanks for keeping me fed, honey!

Garbage Island

Garbage Island is a Texas sized "island" of trash floating in the super remote North Pacific Gyre.

Gnarly.

Check out more videos and info here.