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.

New Firefox with Location Awareness

The new Firefox 3.5 with integrated location awareness is now available and it's got support in Platial's search tool already. With a location aware browser (a gears enabled browser will also work) you will see a little crosshairs logo beside the search button, click this to autofill the 'where' field with your current lat/long, or address.

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.

Platial Nearby Tweets

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

Books on Platial

We are getting ready to start working more advertising into Platial to help us pay the bills. We have had Google adsense running for some time now. Because we know that most of our users are big readers, we are experimenting next with Amazon books.

I know that nobody loves advertising, but it is the only way for us to continue to offer our product, as I'm sure everyone understands. Our goal is to integrate advertising that is pertinent, context-driven, and for products or services that are interesting to you. We are working on refining the quality of the ads that are served. If the map is about something in particular, we are working on sending that information to Amazon. Otherwise, the books that show up will be about the map's starting location.

We are very eager to hear feedback on this. Leave a comment here, send us a feedback email, or leave your thoughts on our public forum.

iPhone City Explorer (very beta)

update: the app is now pulling data from the live site, hopefully this will give much better results.

As a remote iPhoneDevCamp participant, I finally got my little hacked together app up and running - announcing the City Explorer. It could use a lot of work still, but this is a 1.5 days worth of messing around. Basically you can add your own cities to it, then it goes and asks Platial for the most common tags in that city, clicking on a tag brings up 20 Places with that tag in that city, each one links off to the native google maps app on the iphone. More info about the Places is coming, images, descriptions, clickable phone numbers, etc. Anyway, play around with it on your iPhone.

The link to start without any prefilled cities is http://0009.org/i - the app will likely be ported over into Platial once it's up to par - so this url isn't the most permanent thing.

feed 43

A while back, our number-one power user Baostar started mapping some things using our feed mapper tool. He discovered that some of the stuff he wanted to map didn't have feeds, so he started using feed 43. This service can convert content from any site into an rss feed. Pretty cool.

Platial Tip: Publishing Other People's Cool Maps

While you can only publish your own map as a MapKit, you can put a simple version of any map on Platial on your own site. There are two simple versions. One is based on Google maps and the other is based on Yahoo Maps.

The Google map version is an iframe and can be used on most blogs and other websites. The Yahoo version is flash, and can be used on blogs and most other websites, but also on MySpace and many forums.

These maps show up to 40 markers and the titles of the posts from the map. They link back to the map on Platial. They make especially nice additions to blog posts. Also, when something gets added to the map on Platial, the markers automatically show up on the map on your own site.

It would be fun to use these maps for little "map of the week" features on blog posts or side bars. They are really easy to install and you can switch them out for new ones if you need a change. There are plenty of great maps out there to choose from!

Here are some maps that could be fun to have on a blog.

The Fallen Fruit Map by Austin is a great one to use to usher in the Spring. It shows places in Los Angeles where fruit trees hang their boughs over the public space. Austin is an LA-based artist. Fallen Fruit also has a great website. They have a nice Biblical quote on their site: "When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger." (Leviticus 19:9-10) This map would make a great blog post, but it would also be a fun thing to slip into your side bar for a couple weeks.

The Shark Attack Map by Bianca200 is updated pretty frequently. This map on your site would give you a picture of the 40 most recent shark attacks worldwide. The full map contains 70 accounts of shark attacks, with links to news stories. This is the map desciption: "This map shows locations of shark attacks. I have added only attacks from the year 2000 until the present. The map is incomplete. It contains all unprovoked fatal attacks since 2000 and some non-fatal attacks. Please add any shark attacks you know about. You are far more likely to die as a result of driving to the beach than you are of being bitten by a shark while swimming. More people are killed by bees than by sharks each year. Elephants kill way more people than either bees or sharks. Still, sharks are scarier."

Famous Film Locations by Barnaclebarnes is a great map to use because you can see all of the spots on the map on your blog and the information you want is mainly in the titles anyhow. The information for this map came from Mark Allen's blog.

Platial's TypePad Widget is alive

One Click Magic!

Platial Tip: Custom Icons in MapKits

Now that we've changed the MapKit code, the way for you to use your own custom map pins has also changed. Here's how to use your own markers in your new MapKit.

You take the MapKit code we generate for you, then go right before the line that says MapKit.display(); and insert the following lines after a new script tag.

MapKit.baseMarker = "http:urlofyourmarker.png";
MapKit.hoverMarker = "http:urlofyourmarker.png";
MapKit.focusMarker = "http:urlofyourmarker.png";
MapKit.shadowMarker = "http:urlofyourmarker.png";

The line that says MapKit.display(); has to be at the end, and don't forget to close the script tag.