Platial News and Neogeography

Update to Platial Nearby 1.2

Platial's Nearby 1.2 brings you some much needed improvements:

* A new lightweight map tile option (significantly faster downloading over Edge, 3G, and wifi). Choose "mobile" in the settings pane to try them out.

* We also ditched the hill shading on the default tiles, so they are about half the size as before.

* Fixed a bug that prevented some people from merging their devices to their Platial accounts.
(There is still a known bug where occasionally your Platial username will revert back to 'Anonymous', well, this doesn't effect the link between your device and account, it is simply a cosmetic defect that we'll get around to fixing soon.)

* Improved filtering of useless and banal Places and Posts, one of the main complaints after map performance.

* Highlighting of all the great new entries our users have been adding, the Collections tab is getting richer and richer, watch for a great new way to get your data into that tab as well.

Anyone running the version of Nearby from the App Store, watch for an update coming any time (we just got the email saying it made it past the review process and it 'ready for sale').

If you don't have it yet, you can download it right from Apple as soon as the App Store servers are all updated.

Thanks for the feedback and support! There is so much more stuff to come, in fact we are ready to submit 1.3 tomorrow, which fixes the dreaded white screen of death |,,|_

The Hacking of Migrating Birds, and Other Animals for International Communication

The A.M.S. is an alternative form of communication whereby so-called extreme green guerrillas “send messages internationally by hacking into the animal migration system.” The environmental benefit of this is that it doesn't tie you to big corporations, as one would be if using the Internet and mobile phones, and unlike conventional postal systems, it doesn't leave a huge carbon footprint.

Thank you Apple iPhone team!

For giving us this opportunity. It is such a surprise and honor to be featured. Today, we woke up to being #28 of the free apps, even surpassing an app we admire and use a lot... Yelp!

I'd just like to note that this is the way Platial was meant to be used. Platial+iPhone=Potential superhot local service.

The faster map update is coming soon... we promise!

Apple, just please let us know if there is anything we can do to push our updates for map performance or if there are libraries we can leverage. We're willing to come down there asap if need be!

Thanks Again! And thanks to our users. Jason will be making an announcement later about some new features for map owners related to the iPhone.

вильните собакой

This is some kind of city dog map from a Russian design contest.

Beyond the obviously cool way it portrays usage along a route instead of landmarks, I love the visual reference to organic mind maps, as if it's talking about the way we 'think' about place, as being what really sticks. I can't emphasize enough that THAT is a great bit of understanding to have, to use, and to see beyond.

Front Page

Raven Zachary, man about town when it comes to all things iPhone, has his watchful eye on the iTunes App Store basically 24/7. He pinged us this morning with the delightful news that our app, Nearby, is making it's debut right on the front page today.

It's funny, we have all noticed that the 'new' section didn't really have the newest stuff, and ours isn't technically new, it's been in the store for almost a week now, but hey, any exposure is good exposure!

UPDATE:
We are still waiting for out 1.2 update to make it through the immensely congested review process, so for those of you anxious for something a little smoother, a little faster, and a little more stable, it should not be much longer of a wait.

As always, keep the feedback coming, we are busy making Nearby better and better each day.

UPDATE:
and now, on the iPhone version of the App Store, top of the Featured list!

Gas in the Car!

Working in S.E. today, ran Nearby on my iPhone, and came across this older but totally stunning post by kbeadle!

So amazing, this is really the kind of stuff I love to see on the site and the app.

http://platial.com/post/Shell-station-where-they-pumped-gas-INSIDE-my-car/931571

Near Future Laboratory on Geo-mediated Architectural Evolution

Pure Neogeography!

The weak-signals of such things were the playful social experiences of early pioneers. Location-specific social networks like Dodgeball, Platial, Plazes — and on, and on — were all working from the well-founded hunch that social practices beyond the trinity of the screen-keyboard-mouse will likely be about the production of a new kind of space, one that is a hybrid of the digital and geographical.

And I'd like to add one more to that hybrid, personal/internal. It's great to see people who really get what it is we are working on, instead of just whining about the lack of this or that corporate shopping outlet.

The post uses this insight as a presupposition that supports an inquiry into the actual architectural transformations that will result from this evolution of geo-spatial integration.

Also, any re-use of situationist images is good in my book!

Absaroka , The State That Never Was

NYTimes.com has a great story about Absaroka.

In early 1939, as talk of war in Europe clouded the horizon and hard economic times gripped the nation, a group of business and political leaders in this northern Wyoming city hatched an audacious, if not quite ridiculous, plan to break off huge chunks of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana and form a new state.

Platial Nearby Tweets

Just a brief announcement that twitter.com/platialnearby now exists.

Platial Nearby Update 1.2

We have uploaded our 1.2 update for our iPhone app, Platial Nearby, now it's just a matter of waiting for the manual review process on Apple's side of the fence. Those of you that already have 1.1, the update should appear automatically in your device's App Store. If anyone was turned off by the glacial loading of the map over edge, give this new version a shot,

This update includes:

* A new lightweight map tile option (significantly faster downloading over Edge and 3G). Choose "mobile" in the settings pane to try them out.

* Improved filtering of useless and banal Places and Posts.

* Highlighting all the great new entries our users have been adding.

* Fixed a bug that prevented some people from merging their devices to their Platial accounts.

Thanks for the feedback and support! There is so much more great stuff to come.