Platial News and Neogeography

Patriotism Exchange Market

Another project worth mentioning from the Institute for Infinitely Small Things:

Transferring Patriotism

Transferring Patriotism is a new work by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things now on sale at Evolution de l'Art Gallery. The Institute is selling its patriotism to any interested buyers. Once the sale is made, the full transfer of our patriotism to you will occur in the following way:

Two members of the Institute will fly to your country. We will meet you and a witness from your country at the border between your country and the US Embassy or Consulate. We will set up a table with four chairs. We will sit at half of the table on American territory and you will sit at half of the table on your country's territory. We will then proceed to share an American beer. Then we will share a drink from your country. We will repeat those drinks until we are all drunk. At that point, the transfer of patriotism will be complete.

Price: Cost of two plane tickets from Boston, MA, USA, to your country plus additional logistic costs. Sale handled via Evolution de l'Art Gallery.

The gallery Evolution de l’Art arises from a collaboration between SPACE (Juraj Carny, Diana Majdakova and Lydia Pribisova) and Cesare Pietroiusti. Evolution de l’Art is a gallery for contemporary art which only sells artworks that are immaterial, with no physical residue, and it does not release certificates of authenticity, nor statements or receipts. EdlA will represent, on a non-exclusive basis, artists whose artwork is, at least in the case of some specific projects, alien from any physical-material component. Beyond this condition, there will not be any other limitation or requisite for represented artists in terms of medium or technique.

(Via networked_performance.)

A few MapKits of Note

Bootleg Bon Vivant is looking for the world's best tobacco shops. Do you know where to get a rare blend? Know the location of the perfect cigar? Contribute to the map.

I recently signed up for the fon network when they were giving away free routers. Today a Fon community member set up a map of hot spots on his blog dedicated to the subject Have Fon. Seeing this map finally got me to actually set my Fonera up!

Ubikcan is a blog covering politics, mapping, history, philosophy, Massive Attack concerts, and whatever else Ubikcan feels like writing about. There's a Platial map on the blog with an equally gloriously open-ended raisond'etre: "Anyone can add markers or comments to this map. The idea is to share geographically referenced experiences. Say you go to a good restaurant, you can tag that. Or a comment thread may refer to some places."

The blog Fly Fishing in Yellowstone National Park is run by a local expert on the subject whose username on Platial is Yellowstoner. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the blog page to see the map he's working on.

The Guilt of the Neglected Blog

Our blog got mentioned today on Mike Pegg's Google Maps Mania, which is an excellent catalogue of everything Google Maps.

When I saw the post and the link I had a huge pang of guilt about how much I've neglected the blog lately. We had a pretty hairy week of bug battling right after the last launch and when there is a crunch, the blog tends to get neglected. (One of our users told me once that he can always tell when we're about to do a big site update because the blog gets quiet.)

I have a couple little stubs in my drafts folder, so I should be able to get back into the swing of things this week. We have so many new users right now doing all sorts of interesting mapping, I really need to get around to giving them some kudos.

Canyon Guides

The CIC canyon Guides website is using mapKit to show the locations of its certified guides (in German). It's an excellent resource for finding Canyoning guides, especially in Europe. Each guide on the map has contact phone numbers and/or a link to a website. They also often list the languages the guides speak.

Technical Difficulties

Update at 9:09 AM PST: We've got everything stabilized now. Thanks for your patience.

Posted at 8:22 AM PST
We're having some little database hiccups. We're taking care of it right now. We apologize for the hassle.

More News From Platial

Seems like there's a ton going on here these days. Late last night we deployed something we're all pretty proud of. There are still kinks but we hope you're going to love this as much as we do. Here are the highlights...

Platial Slider
By far the biggest product news is the little slider bar you can add to your maps. Give the slider a keyword and it will find the best stuff from around the web. We're sifting through 36,000,000 places to bring you the most relevant places for your map. And it's great! It works best for common terms which have been tagged often on Platial, Flickr, YouTube, Yahoo Local etc. Give it a whirl!

What else is new?

Not a bit of the code base has gone untouched. We've merged and re-architected a ton so its easier than ever to map just about anything.

We've deployed an entire tiling and clustering infrastructure to accommodate and store all of that new slider information across cities and categories. Our Chief Architect, Chris Goad, really deserves a medal for all this delicious geographic data handling and scoring wizardry.

We finally gave you layers. We had to do the back-end to handle of these source layers anyway so we said, lets just build the rest and finally offer layers! Another reason to make more maps!

Updated design and features, better performance on MapKits out in the wild. All 10,000 or so MapKits in the wild have the update, so dont worry- come get a Slider!

Performance will keep getting better- we're growing like mad and our servers are now on their way to Sunnyvale in the good hands of Omar Ahmad, our latest technical advisor and super scale guru.

MapKit available at Wordpress and Typepad.
The fine folks at Wordpress and Typepad consistently go all out for their users and we're thrilled to be a part of it.

Here are a few of our favorite new Typepad and Wordpress users; Messing About In Sailboats., Tia and Nishant Are Looking for Honeymoon Destinations

We want to give an extra shout out to Toni and Andy at Wordpress for going the extra effort for us although they don't typically allow javascript. We're thrilled to be a resource for your community!

Any Platial users out there without a blog? Now's a great time to get one for your new MapKits!

Please give us your feedback on all of this. We're still working out kinks and this will take a week or so.

Happy Mapping!

Di-Ann, Jason, Jake, Tracy, Rama, Chris, Sayumi, Tiger and David

Here is the official release...

miniscule of sound, the smallest nightclub

Dwainweary's smallest nightclub/miniscule of sound map

The World's Smallest Niteclub

Operating since 1998 out of a very small back yard in East London, the World's Smallest Niteclub has gone global - getting lost and found in translation in China, and tackling the outback of Australia! And we're still the undisputed world record holders for being very small - Guinness World Records says so!

The 8'x4'x8' interior of the flat-pack instant niteclub features fluffy décor, flashing lights, a traditional Saturday Night Fever dancefloor, and a not very fluffy DJ. And watch out for the raver in the white boiler suit - he smells.

Appearing in countless small dark corners across the globe over the last 4 million years, the urban myths surrounding the Miniscule of Sound are now almost as extensive as the club's never-ending guest list. We've played nearly as many gigs as those we haven't!

But hey - it's still cosy, intimate and very, very funky!

-from minisculeofsound.com

******* "As a parody of "Ministry of Sound"...in its time has refused many a supposed superstar DJ - most notably asking Fatboy Slim for a demo tape before considering offering him a slot. In Australia the rebuilt club was "accidentally" thrown away after its appearance at a festival in Melbourne. In Beijing the nightclub was built from scratch, allegedly in a converted horse trailer. Although entrance is free, the doormen may eject anyone at any time. The Beijing club had a capacity of 8 people; however the record is 26, though not all of them could touch the floor at the same time." -from wikipedia

They also have the smallest website i have ever seen:

Celebrating Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day and this year's focus is "Ending Impunity for Violence against Women and Girls." This map of Women Who Changed the World was created around this time last year. If you're not a Platial member, you can also add your favorite women to the map from this blog.

History of International Women's Day from the United Nations.
International Women's Day on Wikipedia.

Suburbarazzi

Suburbarazzi is using MapKit to stalk Lower Hudson Valley celebrities. They've plotted the home towns of the stars. I had no idea Ang Lee lived in Larchmont and Bill Murray lived in Sneden's Landing. I had no idea that there even were towns called Larchmont and Sneden's Landing.

I hope their readers enjoy tracking their own brushes with fame. Did I ever tell you about the time when I was working as a waitress and the guy who played the crazy scientist in Back to the Future sat in my section?

Platial Series A Financing

It's getting exciting around here. We've had so many wonderful new users and really impressive MapKits over the past few weeks. We're working ultra hard to get you the new release of it next week! There are some things in this release we think you'll love and one which will make it easier than ever to navigate millions of bits of geographic content.

Why'd we raise the money? We've found something you guys really like and there is a ton we want to do to keep making it better and better for you. It takes a little capital investment though- so here we are, celebrating our Series A and most importantly our great new partners at KeyNote which have been instrumental in helping us navigate good old fashioned business with our new fangled ideas and mission to create the People's Atlas so we can bridge people, neighborhoods and nations!

Thanks all!

THE RELEASE...

Platial, The People’s Atlas, Closes $2.4MM Series A Round of Financing.

PORTLAND, OR  (March 6, 2007) –Platial Inc., which aggregates stories, reviews and multimedia about places from people around the world announced today that it raised $2.4MM in a Series A Round of financing. The financing closes just before a significant soon-to-be-released update of its popular application, MapKit and a series of partnerships.

KeyNote Ventures joins existing investors, Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Omidyar Network, Ram Shriram, Ron Conway and others.

Platial allows anyone to map just about anything, including photos, video, feeds, stories, neighborhoods, travels, friends.  “The famous open api from Google Maps sparked a wave of map and mash-up making by software developers. Now, anyone can add their own information to a Platial map and even put that map on their site, blog or profile” Says Di-Ann Eisnor, Platial co-founder and CEO. “KeyNote understands our space and our stage very well and have already been pivotal in helping us onto a clear and exciting path.” Paul Dali of KeyNote says Platial has a "Totally dedicated team, passionate about giving people the opportunity to enhance, annotate and comment on their local environment."

Randy Komisar of KPCB says, "We are excited by the potential of ‘place’ to enrich the lives of consumers and improve the bottom line for businesses.  Platial offers the best platform we know of for empowering your online life with the benefits of communities built upon how most of us still see the world everyday, through places we care for, are curious about and want to share."

Until now, there has been no single source for discovering local insights from one another. With MapKit’s rapid growth, it is clear that people want to talk about places, and Platial has created a distributed platform for those conversations across thousands of sites. Platial will use the funding to continue development and distribution of the MapKit application which takes the core functionality of Platial maps and allows users to embed it into their own websites and blogs. This makes individual sites richer and allows for participation of their own communities.

About Platial:
Platial.com, The People’s Atlas, is a free resource where hundred’s of thousands of people around the world share and discover all kinds of Places. Anyone can map just about anything including their towns, lives, travels, feeds, files, photos, video and stories in one simple interface.

Platial has been featured in Wired, NYTimes, All Things Considered, National Geographic Online and numerous blogs. The company is financed by KeyNote Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Omidyar Network, Ram Shriram, Jack Dangermon, and Ron Conway among others.

# # #