mapping Archives - Digital Urban

Invisible, Hidden, Parallel Cities: Twitter Landscapes

Andy — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 09:12:00 +0000

By revealing the social networks present within the urban environment, Invisible Cities describes a new kind of city—a city of the mind. The movie below by Christian Marc Schmidt displays geocoded activity from online services such as Twitter and Flickr, both in real-time and in aggregate. Real-time activity is represented as individual nodes that appear whenever a message or image is posted. Aggregate activity is reflected in the underlying terrain: over time, the landscape warps as data is accrued, creating hills and valleys representing areas with high and low densities of data.

In the piece, nodes are connected by narrative threads, based on themes emerging from the overlaid information. These pathways create dense meta-networks of meaning, blanketing the terrain and connecting disparate areas of the city:

Invisible Cities maps information from one realm—online social networks—to another: an immersive, three dimensional space. In doing so, the piece creates a parallel experience to the physical urban environment. The interplay between the aggregate and the real-time recreates the kind of dynamics present within the physical world, where the city is both a vessel for and a product of human activity. It is ultimately a parallel city of intersections, discovery, and memory, and a medium for experiencing the physical environment anew.

Our movie below of London’s Tweets displays a similar ‘hidden city’:

As we posted a few weeks ago, we have been harvesting geospatial data from Twitter with the aim of creating a series of new city maps based on Twitter data. Via a radius of 30km around New York, London, Paris, Munich we have collated the number of Tweets and created our New City Landscape Maps. The maps created by UrbanTick detail the social networking landscaping.

Pictured above is London, below is New York:

UrbanTick has the full run down with New York, London, Paris and Munich, all available in glorious full screen mode via a Google Maps viewer – head over to take a look at the New City Landscapes.

Thanks got to Steven Gray who did the coding and Fabian over at Urban Tick for converting the data into maps. Also thanks to Dr Chris Speed who sent in the invisible cities movie link.

The post Invisible, Hidden, Parallel Cities: Twitter Landscapes appeared first on Digital Urban.

Traffic in the Cloud: Bing Maps Silverlight and DeepEarth

Andy — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:03:00 +0000

Soul Solutions have announced their project launch for the Azure #newcloudapp international competition. Called Traffic in the Cloud it provides a rich interactive mapping twist on public webcams throughout the world.

The interface and fullscreen results are impressive, for those without Silverlight installed we have recorded a quick look movie below:

Head over to the Soul Solutions blog for full details on the set up and how to add your own cameras.

The post Traffic in the Cloud: Bing Maps Silverlight and DeepEarth appeared first on Digital Urban.

Traffic in the Cloud: Bing Maps Silverlight and DeepEarth

Andy — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:03:00 +0000

The interface and fullscreen results are impressive, for those without Silverlight installed we have recorded a quick look movie below:

Head over to the Soul Solutions blog for full details on the set up and how to add your own cameras.

The post Traffic in the Cloud: Bing Maps Silverlight and DeepEarth appeared first on Digital Urban.

Unique Animated Map Service from Viridian

Andy — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:58:00 +0000

The movie below by Viridian was originally created as a talking point for their own site, the animated maps proved so popular that they have now become a bespoke mapping service for clients’ websites and blogs.

We kind of like it – as a small animated map in the corner of a website or on a contact page we think its a neat idea.

See http://www.viridian-online.com/ for more details.

The post Unique Animated Map Service from Viridian appeared first on Digital Urban.

Unique Animated Map Service from Viridian

Andy — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:58:00 +0000

We kind of like it – as a small animated map in the corner of a website or on a contact page we think its a neat idea.

See http://www.viridian-online.com/ for more details.

The post Unique Animated Map Service from Viridian appeared first on Digital Urban.

YouCity.com Launch 3D New York Map

Andy — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:52:00 +0000

A while ago we posted about ShangHai WangCheng Net Tech Co., Ltd and their maps of cities in China created in a unique ‘sim city esk’ point of view. The company has partnered with YouCity.com to explore the western market and have just announced the launch of their next generation ‘hyper local social network website’ based on a unique 3D virtual New York City platform at the 2009 Web 2.0 Expo.

The results are impressive, see our movie below:

Take a look by visiting http://www.youcity.com.

The post YouCity.com Launch 3D New York Map appeared first on Digital Urban.

Atlas of Cyberspace: Now Available as a Free Download

Andy — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:56:00 +0000

Martin Dodge and Rob Kithen’s seminal book ‘The Atlas of Cyberspace’, is now available as a free download. The book was arguably the first mass market publication exploring the spatial and visual nature of cyberspace and its infrastructure.

It uses a user-friendly, approachable style to examine why cyberspace is being mapped and what new cartographic and visualisation techniques have been employed.

Richly illustrated with over 300 full colour images, it comprehensively catalogues 30 years worth of maps that reveal the rich and varied landscapes of cyberspace.

The book includes chapters detailing:

– mapping Internet infrastructure and traffic flows
– mapping the Web
– mapping online conversation and community
– imagining cyberspace in art, literature, and film

Martin is a CASA Alumni and as such the book captures a moment of CASA’s research back in the mid 90’s. Look out for the ’30 Days in ActiveWorlds Map’ (thats ours… )

Download the Atlas of Cyberspace.

The post Atlas of Cyberspace: Now Available as a Free Download appeared first on Digital Urban.

YouCity New York: Stunning 3D Map of Manhattan

Andy — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:54:00 +0000

You City: Sample Map of Manhattan from digitalurban on Vimeo.
A while ago we posted about ShangHai WangCheng Net Tech Co., Ltd and their maps of cities in China created in a unique ‘sim city esk’ point of view. The company has partnered with YouCity.com to explore the western market and have just released 3 demos maps of Manhattan.

The results are stunning (see the movie above) with the final version offering multi-angle viewing and an open api promised.

You can take the samples for a spin yourself by visiting http://www.youcity.com. Such maps certainly raise the bar on what will become the norm in city mapping over the next few years.

The post YouCity New York: Stunning 3D Map of Manhattan appeared first on Digital Urban.

Google Earth Thematic Mapping Engine

Andy — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:45:00 +0000

Every now and again a web based service comes along that takes our breath away, Bjørn Sandvik’s Thematic Mapping Engine is one of those services.

Bjorn is a project manager at United Nations Association (UNA) of Norway who is currently on study leave to undertaking a master’s in Geography Information Science (GIS) at University of Edinburgh. His Thematic Mapping Engine enables you to visualise global statistics on Google Earth in a way that only a few years ago would of been a showstopper using high end tools such as ESRI’s ArcGlobe.

Its is quick easy with a colour scale that fits the mapping well, our movie below illustrates Global Population in 2005.

It is simple to use – go the the main page of the Thematic Engine and select a required indicator – we picked Population. You can then choose your technique of mapping – we chose Prism – and date etc. Its self explanatory with a KML provided to open in Google Earth.