Platial News and Neogeography

A Letter To Our Mappers

Dear Mappers,

Since 2005, Platial has worked to pave the way for a world which can be viewed from the eyes of its citizens, "The People's Atlas". To date, between Platial and Frappr, over 5MM maps have been created. Our members maps are visible on over 500,000 sites around the web and each one of them allows content to be added directly.

Our members have amassed a significant amount of geo-data and brought social mapping to the web at large. The Platial Nearby iPhone application has been downloaded 450,000 times! We are retiring the site because we just can't afford to keep it up any longer. The team has been volunteering for 18 months. However, it will morph into something more extraordinary, more efficient and more in line with the possibilities and technology of 2010 and beyond. We don't have the full picture yet, but we will let you know once we have a realistic picture.

Some of our favorite maps...

http://platial.com/mapawards/2007

http://platial.typepad.com/news/2006/12/this_year_nearl.html

Our efforts, the efforts of our partners like Google + GeoCommons, our investors and mostly our user community created an entirely new way for people to interact and engage with maps. We raised the bar for the idea of mash-up and allowed the entire ecosystem to flourish with millions of users creating maps. We remain bullish on social maps and on the future of location based services and technology.

All of the content will be stored at GeoCommons.com

If you're looking for a new map widget, Google MyMaps offers one. It is not two-way, meaning your users cannot YET contribute but it is a very easy way to map and share maps.

Everyone of us is keeping this movement in social mapping and neogeography alive. Tracy is at Nokia Maps, Jake is at Motorolla, I am working on a fully crowd-sourced, real-time navigable map of the world at Israeli start-up, Waze. Chris and Jason are innovating like mad in social maps, AR and more.

Documenting the Movement:
Original Wired story on the movement by Analee Newitz
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/03/70419

Original NPR story
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5330820

My recent TEDx talk on the importance of the movement on diplomacy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjXSQsZxRys&feature=youtu.be&a

Platial was a movement and it will be carried on a thousand fold. It is real and irrevocable. It put the power of maps in the hands of people and lets us see the world as an interconnected tapestry of stories and perspectives.

Sincerely, Di-Ann Eisnor

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.

Breaking World Record Cycling Around the Globe for Parkinsons Research

James Bowthorpe's inspired ride around the world.

Current position

Police Giving Away Free GPS Units

Techdirt writes about several court cases where the concerns of privacy over police using GPS to track suspects are brushed aside with claims that this kind of tracking is legal and justified because it is no different than physical surveillance.

I'd like to point out that it is very different, in the GPS situation, if lucky enough to be tracked, you get a really cool high tech GPS unit for free!
(if you can find it).

Platial's New Myspace Application

Just in time for summer, we've published the Shark Attack Map as a Myspace Application. Now it's even easier to get the map on your Myspace page. We'll be rolling out more of your favorite maps as Myspace apps in the coming days. If you have a map or know of a map that you think would make a great app for Myspace, email me (tracy --at-- platial) and I'll set it up for you.

Citizen Voting Power Map

From the New York Times:

This map shows each state re-sized in proportion to the relative influence of the individual voters who live there. The numbers indicate the total delegates to the Electoral College from each state, and how many eligible voters a single delegate from each state represents.

UNESCOs Aquafir Map

New Scientist reports:

What the UNESCO map reveals is just how many aquifers cross international borders. So far, the organisation has identified 273 trans-boundary aquifers: 68 in the Americas, 38 in Africa, 155 in Eastern and Western Europe and 12 in Asia.

Each trans-boundary aquifer holds the potential for international conflict – if two countries share an aquifer, pumping in one country will affect its neighbour's water supply.

You can download a pdf of the map from the link above.

Election Hackability Map

Sure it's oversimplified, and sure it doesn't take varying procedures into account, but this map of state by state voting technology does bring me around to the question, when will we just do this open source?

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.

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.