Platial News and Neogeography

Books on Platial

We are getting ready to start working more advertising into Platial to help us pay the bills. We have had Google adsense running for some time now. Because we know that most of our users are big readers, we are experimenting next with Amazon books.

I know that nobody loves advertising, but it is the only way for us to continue to offer our product, as I'm sure everyone understands. Our goal is to integrate advertising that is pertinent, context-driven, and for products or services that are interesting to you. We are working on refining the quality of the ads that are served. If the map is about something in particular, we are working on sending that information to Amazon. Otherwise, the books that show up will be about the map's starting location.

We are very eager to hear feedback on this. Leave a comment here, send us a feedback email, or leave your thoughts on our public forum.

iPhone City Explorer (very beta)

update: the app is now pulling data from the live site, hopefully this will give much better results.

As a remote iPhoneDevCamp participant, I finally got my little hacked together app up and running - announcing the City Explorer. It could use a lot of work still, but this is a 1.5 days worth of messing around. Basically you can add your own cities to it, then it goes and asks Platial for the most common tags in that city, clicking on a tag brings up 20 Places with that tag in that city, each one links off to the native google maps app on the iphone. More info about the Places is coming, images, descriptions, clickable phone numbers, etc. Anyway, play around with it on your iPhone.

The link to start without any prefilled cities is http://0009.org/i - the app will likely be ported over into Platial once it's up to par - so this url isn't the most permanent thing.

feed 43

A while back, our number-one power user Baostar started mapping some things using our feed mapper tool. He discovered that some of the stuff he wanted to map didn't have feeds, so he started using feed 43. This service can convert content from any site into an rss feed. Pretty cool.

Platial Tip: Publishing Other People's Cool Maps

While you can only publish your own map as a MapKit, you can put a simple version of any map on Platial on your own site. There are two simple versions. One is based on Google maps and the other is based on Yahoo Maps.

The Google map version is an iframe and can be used on most blogs and other websites. The Yahoo version is flash, and can be used on blogs and most other websites, but also on MySpace and many forums.

These maps show up to 40 markers and the titles of the posts from the map. They link back to the map on Platial. They make especially nice additions to blog posts. Also, when something gets added to the map on Platial, the markers automatically show up on the map on your own site.

It would be fun to use these maps for little "map of the week" features on blog posts or side bars. They are really easy to install and you can switch them out for new ones if you need a change. There are plenty of great maps out there to choose from!

Here are some maps that could be fun to have on a blog.

The Fallen Fruit Map by Austin is a great one to use to usher in the Spring. It shows places in Los Angeles where fruit trees hang their boughs over the public space. Austin is an LA-based artist. Fallen Fruit also has a great website. They have a nice Biblical quote on their site: "When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger." (Leviticus 19:9-10) This map would make a great blog post, but it would also be a fun thing to slip into your side bar for a couple weeks.

The Shark Attack Map by Bianca200 is updated pretty frequently. This map on your site would give you a picture of the 40 most recent shark attacks worldwide. The full map contains 70 accounts of shark attacks, with links to news stories. This is the map desciption: "This map shows locations of shark attacks. I have added only attacks from the year 2000 until the present. The map is incomplete. It contains all unprovoked fatal attacks since 2000 and some non-fatal attacks. Please add any shark attacks you know about. You are far more likely to die as a result of driving to the beach than you are of being bitten by a shark while swimming. More people are killed by bees than by sharks each year. Elephants kill way more people than either bees or sharks. Still, sharks are scarier."

Famous Film Locations by Barnaclebarnes is a great map to use because you can see all of the spots on the map on your blog and the information you want is mainly in the titles anyhow. The information for this map came from Mark Allen's blog.

Platial's TypePad Widget is alive

One Click Magic!

Platial Tip: Custom Icons in MapKits

Now that we've changed the MapKit code, the way for you to use your own custom map pins has also changed. Here's how to use your own markers in your new MapKit.

You take the MapKit code we generate for you, then go right before the line that says MapKit.display(); and insert the following lines after a new script tag.

MapKit.baseMarker = "http:urlofyourmarker.png";
MapKit.hoverMarker = "http:urlofyourmarker.png";
MapKit.focusMarker = "http:urlofyourmarker.png";
MapKit.shadowMarker = "http:urlofyourmarker.png";

The line that says MapKit.display(); has to be at the end, and don't forget to close the script tag.

MAKE Maps

You could probably guess that a lot of us Platialites are big fans of MAKE magazine and its accompanying blog. (Thanks to a water rocket recipe from Make, my son enjoyed the feeling of being the coolest kid in town one Saturday afternoon.)

We were all very excited, shortly after we launched MapKit, to see someone (Pauric O'Callaghan to be exact) come on and start a few maps for Make. The maps were officially launched on their site yesterday in a blog post and they're linked to now from the top of Make's Community page.

If you like the tabs, you can get the how-to for doing it yourself from the instructable Pauric wrote. I'm listed as a collaborator, but I really only proofread it. There is a Platial Group on Instructables, so if you have a Platial hack, you can share it there.

There is also a map of all of the places you can go to buy a copy of Make Magazine on Platial. There are almost 2,000 Places on the map. Just center on your town and zoom in with the tools on the side of the map to find the newsstand nearest you.

Blogger Template MapKit Preview

While I was doing all of that testing of MapKit on Blogger, I took some screen shots. I just got around to setting up a little gallery on Flickr where you can see how MapKit looks in some of the most popular Blogger templates.

It looks good!

Platial Tip: Blogger MapKit Pages

Blogger is a great service which I know a lot of Platialites use for their blogs. My first blog, many years ago, was on Blogger, so it holds a special place in my heart. So powerful! So free as in beer!

If you want big, powerful maps, more than one maybe, and you want to get to them from your trusty ol' blog, this might be the solution for you. (Heck, you may already have thought of it yourself.)

Put simply: Create a new blog for each map and link to them from the sidebar of your main blog, linking back to the main blog from each map. Your blog is the hub, the maps are spokes. Your blog is the body, the maps are the tentacles.

Here's an example I threw together rather hastily this morning, showing things of interest to families in Somerville, MA. Please do not judge me on the graphic design (or lack thereof) of this example. I literally grabbed the first icons I could find for those map titles in the side bar.

Now, to get into the nitty and the gritty.

* Template I chose the template "Sand Dollar" because its header spans across the whole width of the page and I wanted my maps to be big and wide.

If you want your maps to match a Blogger site you already have, you will choose the same template for your map blogs as for your main blog or copy and paste the template you already use into the new blogs.

The MapKit looks nicer in some blog templates than it does in others. Experiment a little before forging ahead.

* Linking Back In my example I put the link to the main blog right into the blog description box. You can use href tags in that box, no problem. You'll find it under the "Settings" tab.

* Tell People What to Do I changed the titles of all my maps to "Add Stuff to this Map," or words to that effect. The Blog title takes the place of the map title.

* Putting the Map in the Template The best way to see how to put the map into the Blogger template is to watch this two-minute how-to video. Click on the picture below to see the movie.

If you set up some maps, send us an email to feedback at platial dot com to let us know. Use that same email if you need some help or advice on getting started.

New How-to: Add a Place by Address

This new video shows you how to add a Place to Platial using its address.