Platial News and Neogeography

Home Bitter Home

We've had a couple of writing classes use Platial to write about place, and it is usually a total treat! I always love maps that are on stories, but these are maps where people have really gone to some extra effort to make the stories good. A while back I came across one of these maps that I liked a lot. It's called, Home Bitter Home by Victoria. It's about a student coming back home from college for a visit and struggling with growing up.

There are two other maps connected to this one, which are also full of nicely-written stories. One is called Fun in the Sun by Bambi1185 and the other one is Road of Fun by Kdsjcgrl1324. The author of each of these three maps comment on the writing style of the others, which can also be fun to read.

Fine Diving

This weekend I discovered a very cool project that is using Platial. The website is called Fine Diving in Chicago and its creator is Diana Durkes. She is a wonderfully accomplished upcycler. She has the gift of seeing past the chipped paint, cheap fixtures, and shabbiness to find the potential in your trash.

Fine Diving in Chicago is about turning the tossed and found of urban life into functional and fun design. You could say it's about the reclaimation business, as each week blog creator Diana Durkes takes one found item and makes it over into a respectable member of household society. She searches alleys, yard sales and Craigslist listings for salvaged materials and connects her finds to their Chicago neighborhood by geotagging.

The map connected to this project is called Good Spots for Diving. The map tracks dumpster dives in Chicago to determine the best neighborhoods and days of the week for diving. It looks great with Diana's new blog redo.

Here's one of my favorites of her before and after examples:

Ancient History

I know that there are a lot of Platial users who are interested in history, ancient and otherwise. I recently discovered a really great podcast on Byzantine history that I want to recommend to everyone. It's called, 12 Byzantine Rulers and it covers Byzantine history by telling the stories of 12 of its greatest rulers. These are great stories! Lars Brownworth does a wonderful job telling them. The podcast is a companion to the book Mr. Brownworth is writing, called Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization. The book is coming out this fall.

While you're listening to the story of how the West was won, you can also check out a couple of related historical maps on Platial. About a year ago, I wrote about Roman Remains, which is connected to the blog Romanitas. The map describes itself as "a growing library of existing locations where you can see the remains of Ancient Roman sites." It has great pictures and links to websites where you can find out more about the places.

This great old Map Award Winner by Panairjdde shows the locations of 75 Roman Battles. Each post has a little information about the battle, plus a handy link to Wikipedia.

Platial Tip: Bulk Upload

One of the most useful features we have on Platial is the option to map many places at one time, using the bulk upload tool. Here's all you need to know to get started using this great tool.

It's a good idea to start by putting together your file. You can use this template file to get started. Here is what the file looks like:

• Be careful with the addresses. You have greater chances for success if you avoid street numbers like "18A". Just "18" alone has a much better chance of landing on the map. Of course, PO boxes cannot be mapped. Do not put both an address and a lat long. One or the other works much better. If you are adding places using zip codes, don't forget to put the name of the country, too.
• The url field will add a link to your post. Be sure you include the "http://" in front of your url. This also goes for the image column. YOu can add one picture per place via bulk upload, using an image url. To get an image url, the picture you want to use has to be online somewhere, like on a photo-sharing site. Put your cursor on top of the picture, right click or control click, and choose "copy image location." Then you can just paste that url into the image column of your file.
• Tags have the be separated by commas. You can add as many tags as you want.
• You can add Youtube videos or other fancy html to the places' descriptions via bulk. Just put the whole thing in the "description" column.
• In the category column you must put one of the following, and only one, for each place: food, lodging, house, wild, punk, nature, activism, plain, culture, family, shopping, coffee, recreation, health. Be careful of spelling mistakes here!

Now that you have your file all ready to go, you will have to set up your map. Just click on "make a map" in the upper right to get started. You will give the map a title and starting location and tweak all the settings. Unfortunately, the bulk upload tool cannot do custom categories at this time.

After you have your map all set up, you will click on "Add a Marker" to get to the bulk upload link in the add place panel.

You will be invited to upload the file from your computer. If the file is the right kind of file, you will get a success message. This doesn't mean that all of the places have landed successfully on the map. The upload does still have to be processed. The bigger the file, the longer that process will take. When the bulk uploader is finished, you will get an email. If some of the places did not make it onto the map, the email will tell you so. You can then try correcting your file and putting it through again.

One thing to note: The bulk upload tool does not handle accented characters very smoothly. It is best to leave out the accents if you can.

Tactile Sight

There is a story that Oliver Sacks tells on an episode of RadioLab about how he carries these very strong magnetic balls in his pockets, and that these balls are continually re-orienting themselves to the magnetic north, he can simply feel which way is north by the rotation of these objects, essentially a low tech haptic compass. Tactile Sight takes this simple physical protocol to a whole new level.

The Tactile Belt™ is an affordable wearable device that allows you to navigate using only touch.  The device frees you from requiring to use your eyes as there is no display, all information is conveyed via touch.  It is like using Mapquest or Google Maps but not requiring to use your eyes. 

(Via @where20 )

Call for Nominations: Beautiful Mapping

This sounds like a great opportunity for many of our readers and members.

You can nominate yourself or someone else.

O'Reilly is going to be publishing a collection of essays entitled Beautiful Mapping. Andrew Turner (@ajturner) and Brady Forrest (@brady) will be editing. We are looking for people to write essays on maps of all sorts.

The goal of the book is to capture and convey the current "state of the art" in geospatial visualization, neocartography, and mapping interfaces through the viewpoints of the industry leaders. Readers should find inspiration on what is possible, and insight into what goes into making these maps, and how mapping illuminates world issues.

This book will be for anyone with an interest in maps and visualization. No coding required - though reference will be made to tools, API's and techniques with reference links for further investigation.

In Conclusion: The Rise of Community Cartography

Stages 0-4 are in concurrent development but the social impact and adoption will almost surely evolve more linearly. As we approach the unanswered questions, neogeographers can become the community organizers of the coming decade resulting in a sharp rise in community cartography with measurable impact. Community cartography is map-making for the benefit of a community by its members.  The ubiquitousness of social media, democratization of map technology, accessibility of data add a level of location-based equity never before achieved. It’s a revolution that unites the power of location, analysis, community tools and access flattening the system a little at a time.

Since the 1980s there has been a growing movement toward participation in the GIS community.  Mapmaking techniques have been used globally for increasing communications, collaborative planning, and conflict resolution. In the Philippines IAPAD has used 3D models as a way to steward conflict resolution with success. The GreenMap project has broadened participation and access even further, around sustainability. The GreenMap methodology involves a common set of icons and framework so that less stewardship is required in facilitating citizen mapping. Community cartography, one topic of neogeography, has the chance to propel movements even further by putting tools for representation, analysis, collaboration, navigation and diplomacy into the hands of millions of people With further decreasing  of stewardship, come new issues to be resolved with care and sensitivity.

Citizens will shape and create new political and cultural contexts which are online, offline and location aware. Borderless connection and real-time location-data enable  independent cross border social structures, trade, migration and  societies cooperating with one another and well outside of governments.

The infrastructure, need and participation is in place and we can get to work on answering the rest of the hard questions. Emergent products, services and regions will not neatly fit into these stages but will overlap, build on one another, integrate and probably conflict but will continue to change the way we live. Pragmatically speaking, we may have to wait another year to have seamless answers to, “Where can I get the best bagel on the Lower East side right this second?” and we’ll first need to be spammed by iPhone based friend-finding services with bugs but its a small investment for ubiquitous knowledge. Happy Mapping.

Resources & References:

Greenmap
IAPAD
FortiusOne
Frappr
Google Maps
Google Mapmaker
Platial
PPGIS, especially the LinkedIn group for the case study fodder Walter Svekla, Geographic Information Scientist and Interdisciplinary Designer, Carmen Tedesco,   Program Officer at AED Center for Environmental Strategies, Brian Cooper,  Associate Lecturer at University of Sydney,  Elke Verbeeten,   Independent Research Professional, Giacomo Rambaldi, Sr. Programme Coordinator, ICT4D Innovation at CTA (Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation)
Institute for the Future
Introduction to Neogeography, Andrew Turner
Open Street Map
Orton Family Foundation
On Exactitude in Science, Jorge Luis Borges

Stage 4. Diplomacy

How can I apply real-time location-based exchange across borders? How can we create borderless global movements using maps? How can neogeography contribute to international aid and social justice? How can a group of citizens connect and effect cross-nation policy?

Society to society networks become commonplace and global citizens share resources and shape policy, mediation, travel and defense.  This is the stage where long standing national/geographic community issues and territorial disputes can be resolved by societies and where treaties may be forged among citizens.

Neogeography can be the foundation of a new dialogue connecting people across borders, sharing local customs and concepts. Milton C. Cummings Jr. defines cultural diplomacy as “... the exchange of ideas, information, art, lifestyles, values systems, traditions, beliefs and other aspects of cultures....” These ideas, information, lifestyles, values systems become more transparent, easier to analyze to identify points of connection and agreement. Cultures have become collections of subcultures which can be navigated through maps. Within the field of Participatory GIS,  mapmaking is already being used to successfully resolve conflict, border disputes and other social issues. Once these processes are available to everyone and location information is truly open, diplomacy on a  massive scale becomes possible.
The major challenges here lie in ethics and the ability to readily adapt to changing usage as technology becomes even more accessible. PPGIS, the forum for participatory geographic information systems and technologies, shares the guidelines of their strong ethical foundation. Citizens will surely ‘overstep their boundaries’ in foreign affairs and neogeography may be the seat of those new challenges and opportunities.

Stage 3. Ambient Awareness/Viewfinder

How can I get a better understanding of where I am? (Plant species, water levels , historical data etc), How can my location aware device support field-based, perpetual education?

I’m in “Forest park” becomes “Salmon spawning 6 meters north”. How can I navigate near and far using social memory maps? How can we always find the right place at the right time?

Mike Liebhold articulates his tricorder view of the world so well that its easy to forget it doesn’t exist and get annoyed when you go to use it and its not there. But the building blocks are in place for a viewfinder perspective of the world around us.  The much hyped Sekai camera app embodies that world-view and points to better informed human race no matter where we go. Raven will talk more about this at Where 2.0. In stage 3, location is deeply connected to our immediate view and informs us in an ambient way as we passively gather information. The same questions, we answered in Stage 0,  can be better answered with a finer grained, context changing description. “Where am I?”  will provide a hyper local knowledge layer about everything from forgotten histories, toxicity levels and profile-based social commentary which will help us navigate both near and far with the benefit of millions of Geoweb contributors. Traffic, travel, interest, education, crime, politics, economics, language translation, news become a personal location layer. Maps become the ultimate transmitter of knowledge and education happens everywhere you roam.

The scale in some way brings to life On Exactitude in Science, where Jorge-Luis Borges sees “the science of cartography become so exact that only a map on the same scale as the empire itself will suffice.” Via Wikipedia.
 

Stage 2. Collaboration

How can we use time-based location data to enable real-time exchange, and interaction? Who wants my extra lettuce right now? How can social mapping help us improve our neighborhood? How can we organize legislative outreach by district using social maps? How can I organize a play-date for my kids while traveling?

Maps of public officials evolve to action networks for advocacy; petitions, letter writing and other policy-shaping actions, maps of fallen fruit and local food become real-time local food & garden marketplaces, maps of dangerous intersections and local problems become solutions for safer streets and neighborhood improvements.

People now collaborate on mapmaking but will soon cooperate on many location-based movements on maps related to local food, urban homesteading and local advocacy. Neogeographers already create maps around these topics but will be able to actually organize, trade and transact in the future, all on a map. There are three considerations for the progress on map-based collaboration; timeliness, trust and benefit.

“Right now”, is a value-gap in the current iteration of the Geoweb and a barrier to location-based exchange. The timeliness of services like Twitter which support location will allow for immediate answers to geographic questions. Even street vendors are using Twitter to create real-time food mobs. In many circles Twitter has replaced CraigsList for the sale of goods, barter of tools and apartment hunting. The second issue of trust is familiar to all forms of social media and span safety and quality of recommendation. Currently, personal location-data exist in silos across Facebook , Google maps, Loopt, Brightkite and dozens of other services. As people have better control over extending location-awareness to their trusted networks, trust-worthy information increases. Improvements to timeliness and trust are well underway, however, benefit is a more complex and interesting problem to solve. Many groups use online maps as a guest book or journal. On Frappr, people use the map as a communications tool within a map-based community.  But maps can also be an organizing tool. The addition of transactional components to social maps will provide measurable results to communities in the form of polls, resource sharing , legislative communication, action alerts and eventually donations and sales-all on a map. With these concerns addressed, we can facilitate real-time location powered marketplaces and exchanges.