Platial News and Neogeography

Google Geo Developer Day

Notes from the Google Geo Developer Day - June 21, 2006

Larry, Sergey, and Eric made some introductory comments and thanked us for using their products. John Hanke, GM for Google Earth, presented product updates, while Mike Pegg, from Google Maps Mania, and Frank Taylor, from the Google Earth blog, presented some interesting uses of Google Maps and Earth.

Google Maps Mania Summary
Google Earth Blog Summary

It was wonderful meeting the people from the Google Earth community as well as folks from Flagr and CommunityWalk. We missed meeting Tagzania. Maybe next time Luixsto and company?

It's no joke that Google is wagering some heavy bets on KML 2.1, and with their simultaneous introduction of Google Earth 4 for Mac, PC and Linux, it could be a good bet. They waffled a bit at the mention of
GeoRSS, which we are fully supporting in our output at Platial.com and aggregating at Placedb.org (note: Placedb.org is an independent project supported by Platial).

Google also announced geocoding support for the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan. Platial is working quickly to add this to our arsenal of geocoders. You can expect support next week.

You will also notice updated imagery in satellite view on Platial since Google is providing the same layers in Google Maps as Google Earth. "This makes sub-meter high-resolution imagery available for more than one third of the world's population." Google said this is the biggest image database update since Keyhole was launched.

Great people, great food (enjoy those micro-kitchens!), and fun technology.

Thanks for hosting us Google!

--jake

(this photo was taken before the airplane flew over and took pictures for Google Earth)

Platial Release Notes - June 14, 2006

As a lot of our members have already noticed, we snuck a new interface onto Platial a few days ago, but have neglected to post the release notes, till now.

Likely the thing that will stand out the most is the new global navigation:

The newest addition to the lineup is the Today Nearby link. This has been written up in it's own post here.

But, working towards a simpler, cleaner interface, we have changed how the Platial information if organized. Now, The Explore link brings you to the new Maps page (platial.com/maps). The maps page now integrates your own maps into the list of recently modified maps, no longer making a separation. To see your own maps though, apart from any other content, you still have your own maps page (platial.com/YOUR-USERNAME/maps), you will find a link to this page on Your Homepage. You can also see any other user's maps page as well (for example, mine is:platial.com/jason/maps ), by following the link from that member's Homepage.

The Explore area also includes similarly structured People and Tags pages.

Don't be surprised if you see a few minor changes in the interactivity of the navigation over the next week. We finally modified our own javascript to eradicate the previous conflicts we had with implementing the prototype library.

The new, super easy "Been there" button
Just click it any time you have "been" to a Place. The number will increase by one and you will be added to the list of people who have also been there. As this tool gets used, you'll be able to see who else has been to your special Places. Clicking the "Been there" button does not add the Place to your Places. (to bookmark someone else's Place, use the Grab tool and you can always Drop it again at any time.)

A new, single-path splash page

The new splash page is much simpler, it offers you one clear path to action, which is going to a particular city. As always, you can use the search boxes at the top if you know what you are looking for.

This path brings you to a totally new landing page, we call it a "Where" page, or a "Region Profile" page. Basically we have taken the member profile page and applied it to a region or a city. This means that you can finally see a tag cloud for a city (we are still balancing out the temporal element in this - showing either the overall cloud, or a cloud that deals with a more recent dataset), see some recently modified maps that have something to do with that region (we are still tweaking this particular algorithm too, it is currently being very liberal: if the map contains even one Place that is within this region, it can be included in the list.) and, as always, a list of the most recently added or modified Places for that region.

You will also notice that the search results are now shown in this same page template. The main benefit of this, is that now your searches result in a list of Places, and, a list of maps that meet the criteria.

A simpler, faster registration flow
that removes a few steps, and that puts you into a much more logical setting once you are in. This flow also includes new data entry forms on a member's new (empty) profile page that should make it easier to get the first Place and map in there.

So, that's about it, most of these changes have been based on the very valuable member feedback that you have been sending in, and from usability testing. But, if these changes are making any of you very unhappy, please let us know.

Announcing: Today Nearby, our Geo-Aggregator.

Today Nearby is a new service from Platial that pulls together the best News, Photos, Videos, Events and Places from all over the web. Now you can get real-time local updates automatically delivered through RSS or KML.

This is our first stab at a tool that works with the growing wealth of geo-referenced information and provides a real-time close-up of your city. Try it out, give us feedback, get involved and keep an eye out for further developments. Along these lines, Today Nearby is currently a proof of concept, an "alpha" level product. This means that the feed sources may change, the outbound feeds and formats aren't necessarily reliable (as we change formats around) and there are bound to be huge gaps in data. But, if you are as excited about Places and feeds as we are, this should prove to be a valuable distraction from your other work.

The actual Today Nearby webpage is meant as a preview area for the information that will be included in the feeds. It's not designed to be the most efficient 'reader' of this type of info. To really get the most out of this new service, we recommend using it with an RSS aggregator or Google Earth.

One more thing to point out, each category has it's own feed, so you could subscribe to the Photos from San Francisco, the Events from Portland, the News from Baghdad, and the Videos from Miami. We also have a bigger feed for the entire page that wraps up all 5 categories in one.

As always we're hungry for feedback, so lets us know what you think!

New Release

We just updated the site and we've made some big changes. More detailed release notes are on the way.

The most noticeable changes are in the navigation of the site and in the display of search results. You will also notice a new tool called Today Nearby.

Clicking on "Explore" now takes you to a display of all the most recently modified maps, the most recently active people, and the most common tags. To find all of your maps and Places, click on "Your Platial."

Today Nearby allows you to see the freshest pictures from Flickr, videos from Youtube, news, and of course the most recently added Places from Platial for the part of the world you're interested in the most.

We've worked hard on these new changes and we're looking forward to hearing from everyone to let us know how you like them.

What is the Red Moon Code?

I noticed this map recently called Red Moon by Scootdown.

"Looks cryptic," I thought.

Cryptic is right. I read through this blog a little bit and I still have no idea what is going on!

api keys from Chris

Dear Platial Citizens,

The Platial API is now available for testing. The API is described here   The document includes instructions for obtaining an application key. You will need to be logged in.

As one of the first users of the API, we are very interested in your feedback.

Thanks!

Chris

Chris Goad
chris@platial.com

Shark Attack

Bianca2000 describes her new Shark Attack Map:

"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."