Platial News and Neogeography

Thank you SEOmoz and Jones Soda!

Frappr! won an award, SEOmoz Web 2.0 awards chose Frappr as the #1 mapping application. This happened a while ago but I didn't blog it ... until, a case of Bubble Gum Blue Jones Soda branded by Frappr! arrived by post.

Thanks so much for the stellar prize.

Open Street Map Party

Steve Coast from Open Street Map came by a little before 2 yesterday with the sad news that the airline had misplaced his luggage containing all of his gps devices and handouts. Luckily, among us all, there were a few gps gadgets to use, so Jason and Steve were able to amble around all the foot trails of Irving Park. We split up into pairs and went off with paper maps to annotate. I was paired with Caton, who discovered Platial through the new Nearby iPhone app, and who found out about the mapping party by reading our blog. We recorded some bus stops, convenience stores, a parking lot, traffic medians, and, most excitingly, a brand-new one-way street.

When we got to Tiny's, Steve opened up OSM and taught us how to redraw the map and add all the points of interest we'd recorded on paper. The basic interface for using OSM is fairly easy, but you have to learn the lingo a little to tag things properly. It's a bit of a rush changing the map. I recorded a bunch of medians on Martin Luther Kind Boulevard and it was a powerful feeling marking them.

Caton and I were marking things on the paper map and also adding places to Platial using Nearby. I could easily imagine a mobile OSM interface, at least for points of interest. Something that had drop-down menus of some kind for tagging would be great.

Open Street Maps is an inspiring project. I'm glad to have gotten the opportunity to contribute something and I look forward to doing more in the future. Here are some pictures from our stop at Tiny's.

Announcing "Nearby", Platial's new native app for the iPhone & iPod Touch

For those who have been waiting, and those who had no idea it was coming to this, we are proud to announce our first stab at a Platial client for the iPhone.

The angle we took for this app is a little different than Platial's main role on the web. With Nearby, we challenged ourselves to really keep it simple, and local. We have restricted all the queries to only care about your actual physical location. Hopefully this means a simpler interface, and a more directed experience. We still have many issues to work through, both on the performance and the data sides, but we hope it's stable and fun enough to use on a daily basis as it is. It's never been so easy to capture your life on a map!

The main features that really help it stand out from the crowd are:

• No registration required, even for adding and saving your favorite spots


• Access to the incredible world of hand made Collections from Platial's existing member base


• The optional ability to merge the device with a Platial account, giving you a powerful publishing tool in your pocket

So, if you have the new iPhone operating system (a free update in iTunes) with App Store, install Nearby, give it a spin, and let us know what it still needs.

Come help map Portland

In Portland? Love Mapping? Please join us tomorrow at 2pm...

Join Platial in hosting a map party for OpenStreetMap

About OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap is a voluntary not-for-profit organisation that anyone, anywhere can join. The goal of OSM is to provide free map data that can be used by anyone. All of our maps are freely available on the internet at www.openstreetmap.org. Why would anyone want to do that? Aren't there are lots of free maps out there? Most of the maps that you come across on the internet or in your home are protected by very stringent copyright laws. These rules stop the maps from being used in unique and unexpected ways, stifling people's creativity and imagination.

A mapping party is where a group of openstreetmappers and novices descend on an area to map it exhaustively, usually over a weekend. It's a very social event where people can meet up and talk (usually at a pub) in between mapping sessions. A mapping session consists of dividing up an area between participants and mapping it, be that by car, cycle or walking.

Tomorrows Mapping Party starts at Platial

635 NE Going Street @ 7th at 2pm.
There will be a little food and drink.
There will be GPS units to lend out-although feel free to bring your own
Platial will have a few iPhones to lend out for trying our new iPhone app (now in the store)

We'll have you back at OSCON by 6pm.

RSVP appreciated.

Bug Fixes In!

Some sorely needed bug fixes got in today related to deleting places, adding images, bulk upload and so much more. This took longer than it should have. We've been all hands on deck with the iPhone app and we're seriously short on resources right now. Everyone who signed up to beta test the iPhone app will receive an invitation tomorrow- thanks so much and Happy Mapping!

Terra-WebCam

From the digital art collective Pleix.