Platial News and Neogeography

Saturday Deploy

Our first featured user tour. This week Paiges gives her tour of Platial through the eyes of a storyteller and highlights Places and Maps related to the stories they tell. You can also see Paige's personal geography. Anyone can be a featured user and share your adventures (at Tracy's discretion, of course)!

Also more bugfixes and better Add Place to a Map flow.

PSU Vanguard gabs about Platial's Jacob Olsen

Mostly positioned as a feel good alumni riff, this article on the paper's website does actually seem to get the right vibe about what we are about and what we are trying to accomplish. The article also echoes a concern that I've had about documenting street art and graffiti, the fact that the information may end up playing too large a role in the removal of the oft undervalued expressions of these otherwise unheard voices. After adding a few pieces that i really appreciate, i realized that using the exact locations may not be the best idea, and in fact also takes a lot of the fun out of going to look for this stuff. Some other people have been talking about placing areas instead of just points to Platial, and now i see the point. Being able to simply mark the general area of the work may turn out to be the best solution.

On a side note, even i/whenf the work is buffed over time, Platial works as an archive of the ongoing efforts of young artists to leave their mark on the visual consciousness of their city-mates but also as an archive for The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal.

Women Who've Changed The World

Tracy started a great new map that we're all excited about Women Who've Changed the World. Please login to add new women to this collaborative map.

"Don't Know the Address?" release

Live deploy notes:

A major update was just made to the entire "Add a Place" flow. You can now get address lookup as part of the process. Just went to a new lunch joint, but can't remember the address? or even the street it was on? No problem, business name and city is all you need. It's broken out into its own section of the flow too, so it can be skipped when not needed. We also hope that this helps solve some issues with a lot of Places being added to the wrong locations.

Another new feature today is email notifications when people comment on Places you've added. We'll be getting controls for managing these notifications soon, as well as a whole host of new notification options. Let the commenting begin.

Late Night Deploy

You may have noticed that we made a rather large deploy last night of small but sweet improvements like; instant hovers (shout out and props to code.toeat for the labels), user icons in commenting-make commenting much more fun and A LOT of bug terminating and UI fixes. Please stay tuned for ever more deploys- lots of exciting things in the works.

And here are two found maps worth mentioning (well...there are a lot worth mentioning lately but I figure two is enough for now)

Tracy_the_Astonishing made a map of Big Box Reuse

Wept made a map of weird things that happened to him

Thanks to everyone for playing with this and helping us see Platial begin to take shape. Please keep the feedback and great ideas/maps/places coming.

Friday the 13th deploy

A few big things went up today, these aren't the official release notes, so I'll keep it brief.

You can now finally delete all those places you have been wanting to forget about.

Place details don't require a new page load, they just pop up in the map.

One big change is within the member home pages. We're hoping they feel a bit homier, and will be making a lot of updates to these areas in the future.
For example check out Paiges page - http://platial.com/paiges

There has also been some improvements on the gazetteering (adding places when you only know the name).

Your comments on the changes are always welcome, and of course, if you notice anything broken please let us know.

Platial in Google Earth

You can view the last 200 places posted to Platial in Google Earth. Just add the following Network Link in Google Earth:

http://platial.com/kml

Additionally, you can open a user's places by adding ?user= to the URL:

So, http://platial.com/kml?user=jake will open my last 200 places.

This is a quick hack, and most likely will be changing as we develop our Google Earth integration.

--jake

Platial, Ankeny version 0.4 - Release Notes

Hello World!

We're here with another release rolling up new features and some bug fixes. One fun, new feature, is creating mash-ups on the Platial website. We call these Combomaps as explained in Di-ann's previous post. Check out Tracy_the_astonishing's mash-up of sledding and hot cocoa in NYC.

We've also added Verizon business listings into the add-a-place flow. You can now add Places of business without having to look up the address first. We hope this will make adding Places easier, but also realize we added another click to the process. We're improving this flow and will push up a new release very soon.

--jake

 

Platial, Ankeny version 0.4 - Release Notes
1/10/2006

New features:
Dynapaging: Pages are now loaded dynamically (RESTfully).
Verizon gazetteer.
Combomaps.
Map title and icon editing.
URLS are linked in comments.

Bugfixes:

You can click on tags to get Places tagged in that map span. If no results return, try dragging the map around or zooming out.
You can search with a blank what.
Place details shows when clicking on that Place while browsing a map.

Known issues:
You can't upload images if you're editing a place.
Editing a place is a bit funky, you can edit, but can't delete.
You can't edit place titles.
Adding a place returns the place at the bottom of the page.
Gazetteer flow is a bit clunky.

Coming soon:
Partner integration.
Flickr integration.
Editing and deleting annotations and maps.
Place adoption.
RDF and REST APIs.

ColdPlay Fairtrade Combomap

Coldplay fans please feel free to  add to this map! platial.com/system/map/1587+1586+1588 With the new legend and Combomaps feature you can actually find ColdPlay events with Fairtrade outlets & Youth Hostels surrounding them. Happy touring.

Combomaps are easy! Just find 2 maps you like (or more) and add + signs between the numbers. Like http://platial.com/jason/map/1426+1589+1592 for Sledding Hills, Hot Cocoa & Street Food in NY. It could use some UI improvement but have fun and please comment fun Combomap mash-ups here! (You may need to zoom to the specific area to see all layers).

Member control and Merge Map

We also deployed more edit map features to give members more control over the evolution their maps and Merge Maps. Merge maps allows you to take any 2 maps and merge them in a colorcoded way. Here's an example Toronto Bike Share Hubs + Bike shops

It's a first pass- it will become more robust and intuitive.