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.

GPS Enabled Chair Experiment

Blu Dot Real Good Experiment from Real Good Chair on Vimeo.

via @gabrielamadeus

Shoppingcartography.org

Shopping•cart•ography is a mapping activity that tracks where the things we buy are from. Intended for the home or workplace, this world map helps reveal the geography of our shopping in a fun and beautiful way. It is a kit that comes with a beautifully illustrated world map and color coding stickers.

The act of continuously building up the layers on a map that is integrated into your daily life is pretty great. It also might be a nice way to get rid of those little produce stickers that just seem to accumulate everywhere.

(Via @anselm.)

Mappy Blankies

It would border on negligence to not share these cozy quilted map blankets from Haptic Lab (via @caterina). While being able to get behind their mnemonic impact (especially if allowed to annotate), there is something a little dangerous about wrapping a child in a soft version of a neighborhood: kindergarten turf wars.

Map of Knight Rider K.I.T.T. Replicas

One of my new favorite maps is of the locations of people who loved the show Knight Rider enough to make custom replica K.I.T.T. cars and keep them around for more than 20 years. This is dedication. These are true fans. It's hard to imagine anything from today's world being nostalgically venerated like this in the year 2032.

What is Psychogeography Today?

Rich Cochrane explores the modern significance of psychogeography. Does modern psychogeography retain anything of the radical agenda of the 1960s? Should it? Does the term really mean much in relation to modern practice?

This conversation is taking place in London on Nov 7th 2009, more info here.

(Via @altnews_/.)

When Locations Act: A Map of Hitchcock's Vertigo

Wade Roush created a map of outdoor filming locations from Hitchcock's Vertigo. It's great specifically for it's revelation that narrative "place" might be different than literal "place". Specifically that Big Basin State Park was and actor playing the role of Muir Woods.

I think Roush actually "gets" this space around neogeography. His recent article encouraging people to make a Platial map actually focuses on the openness and newness of people being able to make their own maps of just about anything.

David Byrne's Perfect City

David Byrne has always been quirky. That's a given, but reading this article about what his ideal city would feel like makes me realize that he's also got a pragmatic side. Don't get me wrong, his vision for an ideal city is an impossible mashup of everything he loves about a bunch of different places, it's a dreamer's city, the vision of an artist, but it's a thoughtful and down to earth distillation of his first hand experiences. He's making a transition, at least in my mind, from quirky art rocker to thoughtful urban evangelist.

The perfect city isn't static. It's evolving and ever changing, and its laws and structure allow that to happen. Neighborhoods change, clubs close and others open, yuppies move in and move out—as long as there is a mix of some sort, then business districts and neighborhoods stay healthy even if they're not what they once were. My perfect city isn't fixed, it doesn't actually exist, and I like it that way.

(Via @BikePortland.)

September 11th

8 years later, it's still a nearly unbelievable fact, and Fynn Sloyan's piece is still clear and simply touching.

It's also not too late to add your story to the "Where I Was" map.

Belgia - simulated suburbs

What is new? The above image comes from the promotional website for Belgia, an idealised 'Belgian-style' community near Moscow, complete with Dutch gables and windmills. We hadn't considered the suburbs of Belgium to represent a suburban domestic idyll, but clearly a Russian developer thinks otherwise. The site is exceptionally heavy on flash (found via The FWA), stuffed full of movies of sunbathing 'desperate housewives' and dense brickwork patterns. As the montage suggests, this is a piece of instant utopia, a place where there are no unexpected architectural juxtapositions, just choices made in an attempt to emulate an ideal, a sense of atmosphere that is, in itself, largely a fiction.

(Via Splendid Urbanism.)