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.

The Winners!

The Nearby Scavenger Hunt had a slow start Friday, then eagleapex showed up out of nowhere and started posting 3, 4 and 5 item photos from all around Philly, blam blam blam. It looked like a slam dunk, an ace in the hole, but then out of left field on Monday, came parkerburnmill, throwing down a few really high scoring (up to 25 points in one photo) contributions, and rounding out with a bunch of simpler shots right up close to the deadline.

I'm proud to announce, with a lead of 27 points, the winner of the trip, is parkerburnmill!

Eagleapex certainly deserves a round of applause, and will be getting a nice 2nd prize for his contributions.

Thanks to all the supporters and players!

Over and out.

Nearby Scavenger Hunt For iPhone on Now!

CONTEST STARTS TODAY and runs through MONDAY NIGHT! So get hunting for a chance to win a trip to NYC. Second prize also gets to have us develop their own feature request for Platial Nearby.

What better way to celebrate Labor Day Weekend than with a little mapping! This is an iPhone only game - players add as many places/photos from our handy-list of items and the winner will get a trip to NYC during the CONFLUX festival in September.

So go ahead and try to cram as many summer fun items into this weekend as you can! Good for nature lovers, urbanites, families, neogeographers and anyone else planning some good ol' fun this weekend.

Happy Mapping!

Update to Platial Nearby 1.2

Platial's Nearby 1.2 brings you some much needed improvements:

* A new lightweight map tile option (significantly faster downloading over Edge, 3G, and wifi). Choose "mobile" in the settings pane to try them out.

* We also ditched the hill shading on the default tiles, so they are about half the size as before.

* Fixed a bug that prevented some people from merging their devices to their Platial accounts.
(There is still a known bug where occasionally your Platial username will revert back to 'Anonymous', well, this doesn't effect the link between your device and account, it is simply a cosmetic defect that we'll get around to fixing soon.)

* Improved filtering of useless and banal Places and Posts, one of the main complaints after map performance.

* Highlighting of all the great new entries our users have been adding, the Collections tab is getting richer and richer, watch for a great new way to get your data into that tab as well.

Anyone running the version of Nearby from the App Store, watch for an update coming any time (we just got the email saying it made it past the review process and it 'ready for sale').

If you don't have it yet, you can download it right from Apple as soon as the App Store servers are all updated.

Thanks for the feedback and support! There is so much more stuff to come, in fact we are ready to submit 1.3 tomorrow, which fixes the dreaded white screen of death |,,|_

Thank you Apple iPhone team!

For giving us this opportunity. It is such a surprise and honor to be featured. Today, we woke up to being #28 of the free apps, even surpassing an app we admire and use a lot... Yelp!

I'd just like to note that this is the way Platial was meant to be used. Platial+iPhone=Potential superhot local service.

The faster map update is coming soon... we promise!

Apple, just please let us know if there is anything we can do to push our updates for map performance or if there are libraries we can leverage. We're willing to come down there asap if need be!

Thanks Again! And thanks to our users. Jason will be making an announcement later about some new features for map owners related to the iPhone.

Front Page

Raven Zachary, man about town when it comes to all things iPhone, has his watchful eye on the iTunes App Store basically 24/7. He pinged us this morning with the delightful news that our app, Nearby, is making it's debut right on the front page today.

It's funny, we have all noticed that the 'new' section didn't really have the newest stuff, and ours isn't technically new, it's been in the store for almost a week now, but hey, any exposure is good exposure!

UPDATE:
We are still waiting for out 1.2 update to make it through the immensely congested review process, so for those of you anxious for something a little smoother, a little faster, and a little more stable, it should not be much longer of a wait.

As always, keep the feedback coming, we are busy making Nearby better and better each day.

UPDATE:
and now, on the iPhone version of the App Store, top of the Featured list!

Platial Nearby Tweets

Just a brief announcement that twitter.com/platialnearby now exists.

Platial Nearby Update 1.2

We have uploaded our 1.2 update for our iPhone app, Platial Nearby, now it's just a matter of waiting for the manual review process on Apple's side of the fence. Those of you that already have 1.1, the update should appear automatically in your device's App Store. If anyone was turned off by the glacial loading of the map over edge, give this new version a shot,

This update includes:

* A new lightweight map tile option (significantly faster downloading over Edge and 3G). Choose "mobile" in the settings pane to try them out.

* Improved filtering of useless and banal Places and Posts.

* Highlighting all the great new entries our users have been adding.

* Fixed a bug that prevented some people from merging their devices to their Platial accounts.

Thanks for the feedback and support! There is so much more great stuff to come.

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.