Platial News and Neogeography

Geographic Euthanasia: The End of Platial As We Know It

Just a few minutes ago, we pushed an update that signals the end of Platial as we know it.

The quick things you need to know if you have a Platial map you care about:

• All maps have been replaced with instructions and links for exporting - here is an example http://www.platial.com/map/Cable-Access-Highlights/10095
• The Platial blog will remain active as a point of communication and announcements, as well as the @platialmaps twitter feed
• GeoCommons has offered to store and offer for download all the geo-data (maps and places) from Platial's 5 years of neogeography. Access to this data is not available quite yet, but we will announce it here when it's ready
• Export as soon as you can, the service may get overloaded, you may run into bugs, etc
• The service may go offline as soon as March 2nd (when it happens, it will be due to a disconnection from our internet service providers)
• We are painfully aware that this is an incredibly short amount of time to dump this on people. The only response is a sincere apology.
• Only a logged in user can download their own "User's Places" map (the map of all the places that user added or grabbed)
• All other maps are available for anyone to export, as they have always been publicly accessible.
• Some maps with > 1000 points and/or many uploaded images will fail on the KMZ export, but should work on the KML version, we are working to fix this issue
• The KMZ file is a zipped folder containing the geo-data in KML form, plus all the image files that were being hosted by platial.com (if you 'uploaded' images to platial, they will be included, but if you 'linked' photos from the web to your places, those web based links will simply remain in place)
• If you are having problems with the export, there are a few ways to get help:
• http://getsatisfaction.com/platial
• http://platial.com/feedback
• leaving a comment here
• please include a mapid, or url when describing the problem
• Please pass the news around, we are unable to directly email the members, so are relying solely on word of mouth to get the news out.
• For those with Platial maps living on another site (widgets) we are sad to say that we have not found a comparable product that allows easy migration of your data at this time, but we would be more than happy to direct people to such a service if anyone out there can recommend one.
• Google's MyMaps on the other hand is compatible with the KML files we are exporting. If you want a place to keep your maps visible online, find the 'import' link after you create a new map.

I hope this is enough information to get things started. Export more details about why this is happening in forthcoming posts.

Start Archiving Your Favorite Platial Maps Today

Now is your chance to beat the imminent rush and export your full archive quality KMZ maps from Platial. We are in the last stages of testing 2 new export tools and would appreciate your participation and feedback. The 2 new tools are a full KMZ exporter with all uploaded images embedded (any images that were added to the map via the flickr tool or as a web based image link will continue to link out) as well as a newly formatted KML version with image hosting provided by GeoCommons.com. To enable the 2 new export modes, simply append ?export=1 to the end of any map url. This should work for visitor maps (/mapv/) as well as normal ones (/map/). http://www.platial.com/map/Cable-Access-Highlights/10095 becomes http://www.platial.com/map/Cable-Access-Highlights/10095?export=1 Note: this will enable a new KMZ and KML link in the map header area

These export tools are applicable to any map on platial.com, so if you appreciate someone else's map, feel free to grab a copy (with the exception of a user places map (the map of all your places), in which case, it will only be available to that logged in user.

Feedback is welcome as commentary here on the blog, on the getsatisfaction page, or via our feedback page.

Known Issues you can avoid commenting on:

• With very large maps, anything over 2000 points, using the KMZ version sometimes comes out with an empty file despite taking a really long time to process
• some date ranges on geocommons hosted images are missing

Thanks,
Jason

Also, You can expect a few more announcements in the next few hours and/or days about Platial. Might want to start following @platialmaps for breaking news :)