There’s A Map For That: Part One

How To Make Your Own Digital Map

Fortunately there are several free tools out today that allow you to store your own created maps. The best by a large margin is Google, who has put an amazing amount of effort into their mapping business since 2005. Anyone who recalls the Mapquest days can attest to this.

Google offers a feature called My Maps. My Maps allows you to easily create your own maps with pins, or routes, or even areas. You’ll need a Google Account in order to use this.

Google My Maps
Google My Maps

From there it is pretty simple. You can search for addresses or businesses or if you know the exact latitude and longitude, that’s available as well.

You can choose from different map views such as street view or aerial imagery. You can put your pins into different sets, add hyperlinks, or other information. You can even select different markers.

Google Maps Interface
My Maps Interface

Google allows you to share maps privately or publicly. If you share them publicly you can embed them on a website. Like so:

Once you’ve saved your map, it’s saved in THE CLOUD (Google Drive). But if you want to take things a bit further, there are more options. You can export your map, print it, or save it to a PDF.

How to export your data.
Export your data.

The export feature allows you to save your map in a KML format, which stands for Keyhole[1] Markup Language. KML is based on XML, and has become a standard for displaying location-based information on a map along with GPX (which we’ll get to in Part Three). As of right now, KML is a fairly reliable way of storing your location data to import into other programs, such as Google Earth, where you have more options to manipulate your data.

Unfortunately Google doesn’t currently allow you to edit My Maps on iOS, but they can be viewed in the Google Maps app on iOS. This is unfortunate as you’re most likely going to have your phone on you when you want to record your location. Android users are a little more fortunate. You can, however, send yourself a link of where you are, and add it once you get to a computer. Hopefully they fix this in the future.

My incomplete map of places Ive been
My incomplete map of places I’ve been

 

There are other ways of recording your locations on your phone without ever touching a computer. My suggestions for this are:
* Day One: A journaling app for iOS and Mac OS that allows you to record your location and more.
* Gaia GPS: A more advanced GPS app for your phone that allows you to store maps on your phone without a cellular signal, and record hikes or runs and export them a number of ways.

Now with this general information you can start building your own digital map. In Part Two, I’ll go over some social media apps like Foursquare/Swarm and Flickr, and show you how you can use them to add to your lifelong digital map, which will be a bit more advanced with xml data types. So if you want to go more in depth, stay tuned.


  1. Before Google Earth was Google Earth, it was Keyhole. Surprisingly the founder and CEO of Keyhole is the founder and CEO of Niantic, the creators of the new popular app Pokémon Go.  ↩

Retrofication 

Retro is in and nostalgia is a powerful drug. I love certain retro designs and art, whether it be the “future” fonts of the 1970s or 8-Bit graphics. Limitations in past technology produced qualities or artifacts that could be considered inferior – like pixel art in computer graphics or light leaks in photography. Should these imperfections be preserved and used as a form of expression or will they die over time?

#nofilter

Instagram brought the flaws and quirks of analog photography to the smartphone era. It got overused and ushered in a ton of other filter apps. I love Hipstamatic. I like the aesthetic quality of old cameras. Some people don’t even know that some of these filters have origins in old personal cameras of 60s, 70s, and 80s. Minecraft uses pixel textures for everything. Those qualities then in turn have an entirely new origin in style.

je ne sais quoi [1]

Is there a name for these imperfections? We use retronyms to distinguish older technology from new. You could use retro, or lo-fi I suppose. I think there needs to be a term for these effects. You see them becoming more prevalent in film or TV. The VHS type haze used in the film Kung Fury is an example. And now when you look at a movie like Alien that takes place in the far future, the computers look like they’re from the 70s – because they were.

Computers from the film Alien
Computers from the film Alien

What I’m trying to define is a term for when a movie debuts in 2016, and then uses computers from the 70s for some type of artistic reason, whether it be a period film or not.

There’s an app for that

It’s ironic that we are using computers to emulate older technology. Some of my favorite examples of these types of conversions are:

  • Hipstamatic emulates old cameras and films, but puts a modern twist on them.
  • Restrospecs emulates old gaming systems and color palettes. Even the 1-Bit glory of the Game Boy Camera.
  • Playscii is an ASCII art editor. It’s when graphics were made of text. It also applies a CRT haze.

    Playscii is a ASCII art editor.
    Playscii is a ASCII art editor.
  • Glitché is an app that applies deconstructive effects that look like glitches or errors.
  • Decim8 is similar to Glitché and it allows you to completely decimate photos with intentional glitches.

    Glitched Jared from Decim8
    Glitched Jared from Decim8

What’s higher than hi-def?

As our technology improves, and we move from 1080p to 4K, megapixels to gigapixels, and so on, will we try to emulate the technology limitations of today for the same effect? Cursive is on its way out the door. I theorize there will always be an affinity for such stylings, but for how long?

Music is still released on Vinyl for the warm sound of a technically inferior technology. Several indie video games are made in the style of 8-bit or 16-bit gaming systems. Is this a passing fad? Will we look longingly for the sound of an mp3, or PS4 game in the future? I honestly don’t know.


  1. I love this term. It can be used often for life.  ↩