Digital Geography in a Web 2.0 World Event Archives - Digital Urban

Mapping for the Masses: Accessing Web 2.0 through Crowdsourcing

Andy — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:38:00 +0000

Our latest working paper is now available for download – entitled Mapping for the Masses: Accessing Web 2.0 through Crowdsourcing.

Abstract

The paper first develops the network paradigm that is currently dominating the way we think about the internet and introduce varieties of social networking that are being fashioned in interactive web environments. This serves to ground our arguments about Web 2.0 technologies. These constitute ways in which users of web-based services can take on the role of producers as well as consumers of information that derive from such services with sharing becoming a dominant mode of adding value to such data.

These developments are growing Web 2.0 from the ground up, enabling users to derive hitherto unknown, hidden and even new patterns and correlations in data that imply various kinds of social networking.

We define crowdsourcing and crowdcasting as essential ways in which large groups of users come together to create data and to add value by sharing. This is highly applicable to new forms of mapping. We begin by noting that maps have become important services on the internet with nonproprietary services such as Google Maps being ways in which users can fashion their own functionality. We review various top-down and bottom-up strategies and then present our own contributions in the form of GMapCreator that lets users fashion new maps using Google Maps as a base.

We have extended this into an archive of pointers to maps created by this software, which is called MapTube, and we demonstrate how it can be used in a variety of contexts to share map information, to put existing maps into a form that can be shared, and to create new maps from the bottom up using a combination of crowdcasting, crowdsourcing and traditional broadcasting.

The paper concludes by arguing that these developments define a neogeography which is essentially ‘mapping for the masses’.

Download the paper as a pdf (1.8Mb)

Those interested may also like to check out our full working paper series, including the recent The Renaissance of Geographic Information: Neogeography, Gaming and Second Life.

The post Mapping for the Masses: Accessing Web 2.0 through Crowdsourcing appeared first on Digital Urban.

Second Life Presentation/Booklets/Conference

Andy — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:24:00 +0000

Things are shaping up for tomorrows conference on Digital Geography and Web 2.0 at the Barbican, Cinema 2, London.

Our talk is not Powerpoint based but instead mainly running via IMovie with overlays timed to get across our points. For those coming, look away now, but for those unable to make London a section of our Second Life talk is embedded below, examining our use of NATURE Island:

Having moved from a PC a month or so ago it has been interesting using a Mac to rebuild presentations, IMovie has been a joy to use so far. Ok back to the Google/Virtual Earth section as thats still to do…

The Blog will be back as normal and with a new look after the conference, we will also have news on the availability of the booklets.

The post Second Life Presentation/Booklets/Conference appeared first on Digital Urban.

Event: Digital Geography in a Web 2.0 World, Barbican Cinema 2, London

Andy — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:13:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce a CASA and Digital Urban one day event at the Barbican Cinema 2 in London: Digital Geography in a Web 2.0 World. The event on February 20th will see a series of talks from the leaders in the field of neogeography and visualisation.

With talks ranging from Sim City for Real to our GMap Creator, MapTube and Image Cutter software suite its looking like a good event. We are talking on Web 2.0, Neogeography and Virtual Worlds so if you a reader of the blog and can get to London we hope to see you there.

The event is free of charge, simply go to our event page and email for the required password, you will then be able to register online.

The full programme can be viewed from here.

Note spaces are strictly limited.