Platial News and Neogeography

Mississippi Delta, The Birdfoot

The Center for Land Use Interpretation has an interesting looking exhibit up now: Images of the Mississippi Delta and it's inhabitants.

Head on over to 9331 Venice Blvd, Culver City, CA for a peek.

Extended Deadline: Platial/Frappr Map Awards

We're still getting nominations. The response has been far better than we imagined. Feel free to keep sending until February 1st and winners will be announced on February 7th!

"I Know the World" artists talk and discussion

In Amsterdam the first week in February? You might like to check out this afternoon of discussions on geography's influence on art making at SMART Project Space

Within the framework of the exhibition I Know the World, which addresses artistic practices informed by geographic and cultural parameters, participating artists will contextualize their work. These works are research based, their sensibility and insight having been gained by travels abroad and are directly related to a specific location, some works include presumptions and artistic strategies which function as useful obstacles when encountering a host country.

Sunday 3 February, 14.30 – 18.30 hrs
Arie Biemondstraat 105-113
NL-1054 PD Amsterdam
phone: +31 20 42 75951

Bicing Map

Bicing is a shared bike network (~like zipcar) in Barcelona. I found this video showing the changing density of their bikes around town over the course of a Sunday.

Citizens as Sensors

Below is a tasty teaser for a paper written by

Michael F. Goodchild
National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis
Department of
Geography
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA

The Earth’s surface is currently occupied by more than six billion humans. Each human being begins acquiring geographic knowledge at an early age, and by adulthood has constructed elaborate mental understanding of the areas where he or she lives and works, as well as of areas that may have been visited or learned about. Such knowledge includes placenames, topographic features, and transport networks – indeed many of the themes that are so difficult to acquire by automated means. The knowledge will have been acquired through up to five functioning senses, augmented by books, magazines, television, and the Internet. Indeed, one might think of humanity as a large collection of intelligent, mobile sensors, equipped with abilities to interpret and integrate that range from the rudimentary in the case of young children to the highly developed skills of field scientists. These abilities can be augmented with devices that collect other geographic information, from cellphones enabled with GPS, vehicles that track position, digital cameras, or sensors that monitor atmospheric pollution and are carried on the body. Specialists may be trained to observe particular types of geographic information, as for example when surveyors collect information on position, maintenance workers for a utility company collect information on the condition of distributed assets, or soldiers in the field collect information on artillery damage or the enemy’s current positions. In summary, the six billion humans constantly moving about the planet collectively possess an incredibly rich store of knowledge about the surface of the Earth and its properties.

read the full paper here: (pdf)

Megapolis / PixelACHE

enviro-feedback/habi-feedback

50 States 50 nations, a GDP comparison

A great post, currently more interesting in light of all the recession banter, lifted from the amazing StrangeMaps

131 - US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs: "

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a convenient way of measuring and comparing the size of national economies. Annual GDP represents the market value of all goods and services produced within a country in a year. Put differently:

GDP = consumption + investment + government spending + (exports – imports)

Although the economies of countries like China and India are growing at an incredible rate, the US remains the nation with the highest GDP in the world – and by far: US GDP is projected to be $13,22 trillion (or $13.220 billion) in 2007, according to this source. That’s almost as much as the economies of the next four (Japan, Germany, China, UK) combined.

The creator of this map has had the interesting idea to break down that gigantic US GDP into the GDPs of individual states, and compare those to other countries’ GDP. What follows, is this slightly misleading map – misleading, because the economies both of the US states and of the countries they are compared with are not weighted for their respective populations.

Pakistan, for example, has a GDP that’s slightly higher than Israel’s – but Pakistan has a population of about 170 million, while Israel is only 7 million people strong. The US states those economies are compared with (Arkansas and Oregon, respectively) are much closer to each other in population: 2,7 million and 3,4 million.

And yet, wile a per capita GDP might give a good indication of the average wealth of citizens, a ranking of the economies on this map does serve two interesting purposes: it shows the size of US states’ economies relative to each other (California is the biggest, Wyoming the smallest), and it links those sizes with foreign economies (which are therefore also ranked: Mexico’s and Russia’s economies are about equal size, Ireland’s is twice as big as New Zealand’s). Here’s a run-down of the 50 states, plus DC:

This map was suggested by Morgan via strangemaps@gmail.com, and can be found here. Please note that the GDP data used for this comparison are not necessarily the same as those used in compiling the original map.

"

Continental Shelving

Wired article

In 1945, to tap newly reachable offshore oil resources, President Harry Truman unilaterally proclaimed that the US boundary was henceforth extended to its continental shelf. The pronouncement prompted other countries to take similar stands and inevitably led to more than a little confusion about what exactly constituted a continental shelf. Four decades later, the UN created the Law of the Sea treaty and defined the term more precisely. Countries were given 10 years after ratification to submit maps to the UN with their proposed boundaries — a deadline fast approaching for many nations.

Smelling Committee's Audio Clips about Odors Map

The Smelling Committee awakens us to local ecology through the goofy yet meaningful sensory exploration of our neighborhoods. Smelling Committee initiates are invited to explore sniff-along audio guides and post found smells with their cell phones to an online geo-tagged odor data bank. During the DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival, the whole of DUMBO is turned into an audio tour of odors. Look for plaques to call in for an audio guide, download the pdf map or the podcast .

The Smelling Committee is a collaborative project by Caitlin Berrigan & Michael McBean.

They started using Platial to embed the richly researched audio clips that were a part of the original project, making an audio map of smells around DUMBO. Now, the Platial map has expanded to an outreach and collection tool for stories and knowledge about smells in your own area.

Nominate Your Map: 2007 Platial and Frappr! Awards

Nominate Your Favorite Platial and Frappr Maps in the Social Map Showdown by January 15, 2008!

Kick it off the New Year with some well-deserved props and nominate your map for the 2007 Map Awards! You can nominate your own map or any of your favorite Frappr or Platial maps. All entries must be in by January 15, 2008.

Map of the Year and Mapper of the Year Award Winners will be invited to Where 2.0  May 12-14, 2008 in Burlingame, California. All winning maps will be featured to 15 million other social mappers online!

2007 was an important year; Frappr and Platial joined forces to create the best social map service possible! Together, we’re going to make sure that we give you features you want and the best service to make your maps and your groups and to help you find the best of who and what's nearby. Soon we'll be releasing the first major upgrade to the Frappr! map widget, making it even more social. Get a sneak peek here.

Yours,
The Platial + Frappr  Team