Handbook of Research on Social Interaction Technologies and Collaboration Software:Concepts and Trends

Tatyana DumovaMontclair State University, USA

Richard FiordoUniversity of North Dakota, USA

Hershey • New YorkInformatIon scIence reference

Volume II

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Handbook of research on social interaction technologies and collaboration software : concepts and trends / Tatyana Dumova and Richard Fiordo, editors. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: "This book explores the origin, structure, purpose, and function of socially interactive technologies known as social software"--Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-1-60566-368-5 (hbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-60566-369-2 (ebook) 1. Information technology--Social aspects. 2. Online social networks. 3. Internet--Social aspects. 4. Groupware (Computer software)--Social aspects. I. Dumova, Tatyana, 1962- II. Fiordo, Richard, 1945- HM851.H3486 2009 303.48'33--dc22 2008054205

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Chapter 39

NeogeographyJudith Gelernter

Carnegie Mellon University, USA

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

Neogeography refers to geography in the new, Web 2.0 style—a collaborative technology from the public rather than from those in the profession. The practice of neogeography1 shares the character-istics of other social interactive web technologies: a group of people (many unknown to one another) who volunteer to contribute data about a topic—in this case, mapping. The phenomenon could be

studied from many angles: namely, the identity of the active creators of the data, their “free time”, the nature of their data, and the identity of passive users of that data.

Neogeography might be considered a subset of cybercartography or interactive, web-based spatially referenced data. Interest in geographical or geospatial websites as distinct from the page websites has lead to the term Geospatial Web or the GeoWeb (Sharl & Tochtermann, 2007). Any sort of data that conveys place can qualify as geographical data, including for example, zip codes, area codes,

ABSTRACT

Neogeography refers to geography in the Web 2.0 style. The practice of neogeography shares the char-acteristics of other social interactive technologies as it represents a collaborative effort by the general public rather than professionals. Volunteer-supplied geographic tags may assume informational value beyond entertainment. Their potential is tempered by problems stemming from its novelty. For instance, neogeography-related websites provide different ways for people to contribute tags, photographs, lo-cations, and commentary. More serious concerns are whether data and commentary are accurate and whether photographs can be an invasion of privacy. Assuming we come to terms with these concerns and there is a future for neogeography, the next generation of applications might change in appearance, mode of access, and the sorts of layered geographical information that might be added above a map.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch039

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images of a place, census data or place names. A variety of technologies are used to integrate and display geospatial information. The Open Geo-spatial Consortium is a group of several hundred countries, universities and government agencies working to create and advocate standard geospa-tial techniques and formats. One such format is the XML format for geographic data known as GML (Geography Markup Language). The hope is that, by supporting certain technologies and formats over others, these will become the most widespread, and so more systems can interoperate. The use of open source software also encourages interoperability.

The “real” geographic techniques referred to in the quote come from Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The difference is that GIS provides a framework to capture and store data located by latitude and longitude coordinates, whereas in neogeography, the coordinate grid of the base is secondary to the annotations above. Some aca-demics call participant mapping projects GIS/2 (Miller, 2006, p. 191). Others see an overlap be-tween traditional geospatial and neogeography in terms of the raster or vector basemaps, geocoding, GeoRSS and KML file formats and visualization (Satyaprakash, 2008).

A basemap may follow a raster or vector model. Raster models show the earth’s surface continu-ously as in an aerial photograph, satellite image, or elevation surface. Vector models represent the surface of the earth by means of discrete points, lines and polygons, and are useful for storing data that have discrete boundaries, such as streets and country borders. Raster models in 3D show the earth’s surface in relief, and vector models in 3D show a bird’s eye view. Hybrid models of either dimension show both a continuous surface and overlay lines.

Geography has been opened to the neo, new geographer, that is, the non-expert, with the falling prices of instruments that measure latitude and longitude automatically and with the creation of easy-to-use, freely-accessible map applications.

Mapping applications allow geo-coded data to be uploaded and positioned above a map, and pre-existing websites, such as Flickr for photographs that have added location-sensitive functionality to open geography to the enthusiast. Google Earth is one such application. Their chief technologist reported that, as of October 2007, the basic free version of Google Earth has been downloaded over 250 million times (GeoWeb, 2007, p. 16).

A Global Positioning System (GPS) device lets the user determine location, which can then be uploaded to a neogeography application. The GPS device triangulates measurements from several earth-orbiting satellites to record a loca-tion that is generally precise to within about 15 meters, barring weather and other conditions that hinder signal transmission. Those whose mobile phones conform to the Global System for Mo-bile Communications (GSM) standard can pick up location WiFi. Those who own a GSM cell phone may use GSM localization that measures the relative strength of signals from the broadcast points. Some digital cameras also are equipped to record location, which is then encoded in the photographs. Unless the camera is close to the object of the image, however, the coordinates of the image only approximate the coordinates of the camera, making the image coordinates imprecise. Location coordinates automatically assigned to pictures makes it easy to add those pictures to maps.

NeOGeOGRAphy TeChNOlOGIeS

Different neogeography technologies allow people to contribute variously. There are companies that specialize in basemaps; others, such as Google and Microsoft, have ventured into the market and financed their own large-scale topological photographing efforts. Smaller companies spe-cialize in the neogeography application only, asking for the addition of locations, photographs, sound or video over their basemap. Complex

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data analyses, once the domain of GIS experts, now are performed also by plotting events such as criminal disturbances over maps. “What if” visualizations for urban planning, for example, have been uploaded for general comment in what is called Public Participatory GIS (PPGIS). An overview of basemaps and the different sorts of neogeography contributions follow a list of neogeo-related websites at the end of this chapter. Those looking for a discussion of neogeography applications might consult Turner (2006).

Basemaps

Basemaps are the maps showing the earth’s surface or boundaries above which other sorts of thematic information can be plotted. Digital maps typically adopt a few standard scales that are derived from older printed maps. The high resolution of the basemaps and pan and zoom functionality allows scale flexibility. In piecing together the photo-graphs comprising the basemap for Google Earth, it has been suggested that “Google has created a new datum, or horizontal reference system that is substantially different from the current North American datum, but which is widely accepted because of the authority of Google” (Goodchild, 2007, p. 219).

Geobrowsers are used to view basemaps and the above data. Most geobrowsers can scan in any direction, and pan in and zoom out to change scale. Some such as Google Earth with 3D imagery allow the horizon line to be tilted so that the map can be seen from directly above, at ¾ or bird’s eye view, or horizontally such as at street level. NASA’s WorldWind and Microsoft’s Virtual Earth also allow viewing in 3D. Microsoft’s Virtual Earth adds to its basemap 3D models of cities derived from photographs, while the Google SketchUp program allows users to create 3D modeling of buildings fairly easily.

Platial, Jpgearth, and Wikimapia provide raster rather than vector renderings of the earth with pan and zoom functionality and allow users to

add photos and/or brief descriptions. Loc.alize.us allows photographs to be set on raster, vector, or hybrid basemap. GeoCommons uses a raster base, and Mapufacture, a vector base, each along with a choice of data sources, so that users can create an end product mashup from two or more sources.

Adding Descriptive Information

Users may add descriptive keyword and latitude and longitude via geotags. A common theme of neogeography projects is to invite different users to geotag the same map. Casual users may explore Platial2 maps, but a login in needed for full access to site features. Figure 1 displays a map of shark attacks that had been viewed over 400,000 times. This neogeography website gives users the code and the permission to publish this map elsewhere on the web. The detail screen gives an overview of the map (see Figure 1). Each marked place is shown in a list corresponding to a marker (as in Figure 2)—this map has 146 places marked. An-notation consists of either text or photographs or both (as in Figure 3).

ClipGlobe too offers users a basemap and in-vites users to tag points of interest. The GeoSpatial Media Organizer combines social networking with GPS to allow users to publish locations from their hikes or vacations and share it privately or with communities. It is compatible with any Garmin or Magellan handheld GPS device. Wikimapia encircles political boundaries, or zooms to build-ings or sites with bounding boxes that indicates annotations are available. Click on a bounding box, and a text box appears with a description of the place and sometimes a hyperlink to find more information. Geotags may be added to audio content in the FreeSound Project or to video in VlogMap.

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Adding photographs

Jpgearth and Loc.alize.us provide basemaps over which users are invited to add photographs with descriptions. Jpgearth allows users to add photo-graphs of whatever they like; and browsing over current content shows that they like portraits of people or pets in daily living settings, at special

events, and travel photos of monuments, build-ings or scenery. Loc.alize.us provides about as many features as any, thanks in part to its partners--address search is provided by Google and Geonames, photos are shared via Flickr, and satellite imagery via Google Maps. Loc.alize.us allows photographs to be uploaded with short descriptions and tag terms for indexing. Once

Figure 1. Shark attack map overview (© Platial.com. Used with permission).

Figure 2. Shark attack item list (© Platial.com. Used with permission)

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a Loc.alize.us map is customized, anyone may employ the provided code to embed that map in a personal website.

Adding Dynamic locations

Another kind of neogeography-related applica-tion tracks locations that are temporary. There are websites in which people can point out spots on a map where they have seen celebrities. Those unconcerned with celebrities might be content to share their location and stay connected with friends on websites similar to Plazes.com through stationary or mobile devices with Internet ca-pabilities.3 Geoportail is a comparable site for French-speaking areas of the world.4 Finally, Location Based Services can register whereabouts of mobile phone callers in an emergency or track the location supply shippers.

Adding Commentary for Decision-making

Collaborative or cooperative Geographic Infor-mation Systems (GIS) integrate technologies that encourage participation in spatial decision making

(Balram & Dragićević, 2007). Participatory strate-gies include collaborative mapping, community review of data, collaborative data gathering, and community conflict resolution (Elwood, 200, p.199). Subsets of collaborative GIS are participa-tory GIS (PGIS) and public participatory GIS (PP-GIS). Both PGIS and PPGIS provide information about places for decision-making. The distinction between the two seems to be that PGIS attempts to integrate widely held opinions about places with expert knowledge, whereas PPGIS focuses on widely held public opinions (Hawthorne et al., 2007, 46, 47). Level of involvement allowed by the technology in PPGIS projects varies. Creating an efficient PPGIS project requires background about the probable users and their level of interest or participation; otherwise, services will be provided that the public will ignore (Dunn, 2007).

value of Neogeography Techniques

The value of community-contributed data to au-thoritative GIS data could be enormous. World mapping has been declining, owing in some mea-sure to mapping costs, and what there is has not invariably been kept current (Goodchild, 2007).

Figure 3. Shark attack map example of annotation (© Platial.com. Used with permission)

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Neogeography could help fill in the blanks left by official mapping agencies.

Other types of map mashups could be valuable as well. ChicagoCrime.org created by Adrain Ho-lovaty mashes code from Google Maps API with data from the Chicago police department’s self-published crime statistics (Miller, 2006, p.192). The site is read-only and non-participatory. The Canadian Century Research Infrastructure has a project to build early 20th-century datasets onto maps that show changes in the fabric of Canadian society (St-Hilaire et al., 2007). Scientists are attempting to use cancer records to show cancer outbreaks according to demographics and envi-ronment (Rushton et al., 2006). ExplorOurPlan.net mashes images and data on climate change. United States consumer projects include Zillow.com that mashes Microsoft’s Virtual Earth with data to show home prices across the country, and Gasbuddy.com that does the same for local gas prices. Citizens may contribute data to help monitor the environment, as in project PEOPLE (Population Exposure to Air Pollutants in Europe) that monitors city environments through the use of contour maps depicting air quality.5

CONTROveRIeS AND ISSUeS IN NeOGeOGRAphy

Problems stem from factors that hinder the ex-pansion and popularity of neogeography and the sharing of related data. Controversies singled out for comment are aspects of the annotations added by neogeographers, and how the neogeography products might be displayed and discovered.

AnnotationsStandards

Location is stored in many geographic data formats. GPS uses the GPS exchange format. Microformats adr and geo are used within Hy-pertext Markup Language (HTML) to show web

pages graphically for a browser, and Geography Markup Language (GML) is the XML grammar used to describe geographic features. GeoRSS is an extension of RSS used for notification; it is a primary way location data is shared and aggre-gated. KML keyhole is the format used to display spatial data in a browser such as Google Earth or Google Maps, with KMZ being the compressed version. The Open Geospatial Consortium recently endorsed the KML format. Presently it is neces-sary to convert GeoRSS to KML or vice versa. The hidden controversy seems to be whether the GeoRSS or KML will dominate.

Accuracy

Good data is carefully measured and current. One hope for the online community is that contributors will be interested in spotting others’ mistakes. If not, an editorial staff per web application might dictate what should appear and what ought to be altered.

Privacy

Google’s street level imagery challenges accepted notions of privacy. However, changes often are made for security reasons and some image details are blurred to forestall lawsuits. Furthermore, photographs tend to be between six months and three years old, which is intended to limit their usefulness to malefactors.

Knowledge of people’s whereabouts could save lives, and this is the original purpose of requiring many U.S. cell phones to be location-compliant. To prevent the invasion of our personal privacy, our signals could be blocked or obfuscated so that our location remains hidden (Drummond, João, & Billen, 2007).

Who owns the data? Copyright is a possible concern. If one person owns data and another adds geotags, it is unclear whether the data has assumed a new form. It is one thing to create a temporary map; to re-use the map can be more

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complicated. But “there can be little use of geo-information for democratization if widespread access to data is not a reality” (Bodum & Jaegly, 2007, p. 235).

Applications

Some software is distributed as open source, mean-ing that the source code is available for anyone to copy or modify to create new applications. Some of the excitement conveyed in popular Geoweb writings (e.g., GeoWeb, 2007) comes from the untapped potential of how such content could be used. It is the map application developers and map makers themselves that will direct progress. We would be better able to predict what sites would become popular if we could define the participat-ing community. But in general, we do not know any contributors, less so from their blog screen names. The variety of blog sites and softwares splinter the users.

map UsersInterface Parameters to Find Geographic Information

Some geographic search systems allow users to query by region size, whether semantically by name of state, city or country, for example, or by visualization allowing the user to alter the size of a footprint by re-sizing the borders of a bounding box. Users may prefer results to display in order of geographic proximity nearest to the query term, rather than in terms of frequency of occurrence of the location that appears in the document or map.

Looking for Geographic Information

We know that users want geographic information. Analysis of a four week sample from a million queries collected in 2004 from logs of a large search engine showed that geography words contributed the largest percentage of any query

category, when the categories included activity, adult, arts and humanities, shopping, computer, education, healthcare, people, and science (Sand-erson and Han, 2007). Mashups and other products of neogeography would surely satisfy some of these location queries. But are people finding what they are looking for?

Finding Geographic Information

Until recently, geographic indexing and access has relied on place names, often depending on the Library of Congress Subject Headings and Name Authorities. Many places share the same name. Often the names of people and organiza-tions include place names, so irrelevant documents are commonly retrieved. The task of determining which place is meant by an address or a region is known as grounding or localization, or, to use a phrase coined by Leidner, toponym resolution (Leidner, 2007, p..34).

Geographic indexing more recently has been supplied by geotags. These might be supplied by neogeography enthusiasts, or they can be made automatically (Pyalling, Maslov, & Braslavski, 2006) from information taken from zip codes and telephone area codes, for example. Research currently is being conducted on how to detect geographic locations from web pages (Wang et al., 2005). This involves determining which names are geographic and which are not: and then from among the geographic names, which place is indicated. Some of these problems have been solved by commercial products such as Metacarta. Community Coder 9.0 by ESRI and GeocodeCD 2.5 can take standard street addresses with zip codes and assign geotags. ESRI has purchased the current release of Community Coder that assigns to an address latitude and longitude.

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fUTURe TReNDS

All search queries in the coming GeoWeb might become location-targeted so that retrieved web-sites might be displayed over a map. John Hanke, Director of Google Earth and Google Maps, pointed to two specific trends that might shape the face of neogeography: the development of basemaps and annotations. Financial returns fol-low the trends, and we might see more investment in the basemaps, as well as acknowledgement of location-targeted advertising, and mergers and acquisitions of companies in this domain (Hanke & Seefeld, 2007). Also we might see an annotation explosion as social technologies become more popular and data collects.

Hypothetical questions that may be raised of any social interactive web technology would ap-ply equally to neogeography. What engendered the social climate of the early 21st century that attracts people to have their say on the web? What types of people spend their free time on the social interaction instead of entertainment on the web? When, how much, and why do they contribute? If everyone’s opinion matters, is the “expert” passé? What brings them to one social technology website rather than another? Turning to data generation raises another set of questions. How could we encourage data sharing that is free, or at least fair? Should there be an incentive to encourage contributions of higher quality? And if so, should the motivation be primarily social (wider acknowledgement or just at the website) or economic (such as revenue sharing)? Should data quality be monitored, and if so, who would set the standards? How could that data be used by others? Perhaps participation on a range of sites is diffusing effort from what could be an army of volunteers accomplishing a few important projects cooperatively. If the effort were channeled, which projects would merit collective attention? The answers should be given by the new map makers and users and the practice of neogeography.

how Geo-Information will look

Driving directions might continue to be preferred as flat plans, but other sorts of geo-information probably will be preferred in volumetric form. Browsers will need to accommodate 2.5D tilted and 3D volumetric views. Monitors will need fine resolution, as will screens of mobile devices. Sys-tems created on a 3D model will be entirely new, rather than adaptations of present two-dimensional systems, in that 3D uses entirely different spatial referencing (Kolar, 2006, p. 210). Computers will need large caches so that pages load fast. Bandwidth will need to be wide enough to ac-commodate information flow increases.

“Pull” Technology

Geographic search in most current forms requires effort, entering a search term for example. This effort required to pull results from the system explains the idea of “pull” technology. We should not need to go to geo-sites for geo-information, however. Data sets increasingly might combine heterogeneous forms of data, and search interfaces might add features to search by or view results that are spatial. Results listings should accommodate a simultaneous display of different information forms, just as today’s television includes text crawl below video. How to determine relevance of different forms of information retrieved by a query term is an unsolved question.

“Push” Technology

Relevant information could be sent to us during the day. This will come about as our GPS, mobile phones, cars and other devices automatically sense where we are and send us information that cor-responds to our whereabouts. The system pushes us information without effort on our behalf.

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New Ways to Use the New maps

Community-made maps reveal as much about the community as about its land. Giaccari and Fogli propose the term affective geographies to describe how place is represented subjectively. A collectively-made map may show individual or collective perception, interpretations, and ex-pectations about that mapped location (Giaccari and Fogli, 2008). Participation in the mapping, in its own way, can inspire community interest in its environment.

CONClUSION

The practice of neogeography resembles that of other social interactive technologies in terms of the people who create it (web enthusiasts), their time (offered freely), the data (if user-generated), and the product (a combined effort in which many contribute to a whole). It differs from other social interactive technologies in the character and or-ganization of data. The character of location data is as likely to be impersonal as personal, and the organization of the data is likely to be in layers.

Neogeographers’ contributions have the po-tential to add significantly to official information created on behalf of governments or other public or professional organizations, many of which cannot afford to fund expensive mapping surveys routinely. Neogeography applications in the future may see changes in their basemaps, annotations, and file standards. In terms of the basemap, invest-ments will be made in accurate data. Annotations will take the form of photographs, sound or video and labels for points of interest over the basemaps. Expanding annotation layers might be a new trend in web development, with the number and kinds of layers constrained only by bandwidth and by the imagination. Rather than a continuous stream of applications being created, Application Program Interfaces (APIs) that allow one program to run within another are becoming available; they allow

people to make adjustments to major systems such as Google Maps and Google Earth. The adoption of standards will encourage data sharing among applications.

Volunteer-supplied geographic tags may as-sume informational value beyond entertainment. Their potential is tempered by problems stemming from its novelty. For example, neogeography -re-lated websites provide different ways for people to contribute tags, photographs, locations, and commentary. More serious concerns are whether data and commentary are accurate, and whether photographs can be an invasion of privacy. As-suming we come to terms with these concerns and there is a future for neogeography, the next generation of applications might change in ap-pearance, mode of access, and the sorts of layers of geographical information that might be added above a map.

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Balram, S., & Dragićević, S. (2007). Collab-orative geographic information systems: Origins, boundaries, and structures. In S. Balram & S. Dragićević (Eds.), Collaborative geographic in-formation systems (pp. 1-22). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing.

Bogum, L., & Jaegly, M. (2006). The democratiz-ing potential of geographic exploration systems (GES) through the example of GRIFINOR. In A. Abdul-Rahman, S. Zlatanova, & V. Coors (Eds.), Innovations in 3D geo information systems (pp. 235-244). Berlin, Germany: Springer.

Drummond, J., João, E., & Billen, R. (2007). Cur-rent and future trends in dynamic and mobile GIS. In J. Drummond, R. Billen, E. João, & D. Forrest (Eds), Dynamic and mobile GIS: Investigating changes in space and time (pp. 289-300). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

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Dunn, C. E. (2007). Participatory GIS—a people’s GIS? Progress in Human Geography, 31(5), 616–637. doi:10.1177/0309132507081493

Elwood, S. (2006). Negotiating knowledge pro-duction: The everyday inclusions, exclusions, and contradictions of participatory GIS research. The Professional Geographer, 58(2), 197–208. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9272.2006.00526.x

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Giaccardi, E., & Fogli, D. (2008, May). Affective geographies: Toward a richer cartographic seman-tics for the geospatial Web. In Proceedings of the International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, Napoli, Italy (pp. 173-180).

Goodchild, M. F. (2007). Citizens as sensors: The world of volunteered geography. GeoJournal, 69, 211–221. doi:10.1007/s10708-007-9111-y

Hanke, J., & Seefeld, B. (2007, May 29). The evolution of the Geoweb (O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference Address). San Jose, CA. Retrieved June 30, 2008, from http://blip.tv/file/338542

Hawthorne., et al. (2007). Beyond the public meet-ing: Building a field-based participatory GIS for land use planning in Monangalia Country, WV. In S. Balram & S. Dragićević (Eds.) Collabora-tive geographic information systems (pp. 43-65). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing.

Hill, L. (2006). Georeferencing: The geographic associations of information. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kolář, J. (2006). On the road to 3D geographic systems: Important aspects of global model-mapping technology. In A. Abdul-Rahman, S. Zlatanova, & V. Coors (Eds.), Innovations in 3D geo information systems (pp. 207-223). Berlin, Germany: Springer.

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Mateos, P., & Fisher, P. F. (2007). Spatiotemporal accuracy in mobile phone location: Assessing the new cellular geography. In J. Drummond, R. Billen, E. João, & D. Forrest (Eds.), Dynamic and mobile GIS: Investigating changes in space and time (pp. 189-212). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Miller, C. C. (2006). A beast in the field: The Google maps mashup as GIS/2. Cartographica, 41(3), 187–199.

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Rushton, G., Armstrong, M. P., Gittler, J., Greene, B. R., Pavlik, C. E., West, M. M., & Zimmerman, D. L. (2006). Geocoding in cancer research: A review. American Journal of Pre-ventive Medicine, 30, S16–S24. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2005.09.011

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Satyaprakash (2008). Neogeography: Goodbye to GIS? GIS Development. Retrieved January 8, 2008, from http://www.gisdevelopment.net/ezine/global/pdf/feb08/70-71.pdf

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St-Hilaire, M., Moldofsky, B., Richard, L., & Beaudry, M. (2007). Geocoding and mapping his-torical census data: The geographical component of the Canadian Century Research Infrastructure. Historical Methods, 40(2), 76–91. doi:10.3200/HMTS.40.2.76-91

Turner, A. J. (2006). Introduction to neogeogra-phy. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly.

Wade, T., & Somer, S. (Eds.). (2006). A to Z GIS: An illustrated dictionary of geographic informa-tion systems. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press.

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NeOGeOGRAphy-RelATeD WeBSITeS

http://bluweb.com/us/chuset/gmapez - Allows to build maps

http://ClipGlobe - Allows to embed video clips in a map

http://earth.google.com - Allows to add text and photos to a map

http://earth.google.com - Allows to upload photos to the map

http://gutenkarte.org - Generates maps by extract-ing places from classical literature

http://labs.metacarta.com/GeoParser/documenta-tion.html - A tool to geo-parse personal documents or websites

http://loc.alize.us - Combines addresses, photos and satellite map

http://mapstraction.com - Resources to create a common interface for various mapping provid-ers

http://mapufacture.com - Allows to build your own maps

http://photrax.com – Allows to create a global travel guide

http://pininthemap.com - A placemark sharing website

http://planetgs.com - Aggregates geospatial blogs

http://platial.com - Allows to create maps

http://QuikMaps.com - Allows to draw on a map and show it in Google Earth

http://veryspatial.com/about.php - Geography-related blog and podcast

http://wikimapia.org - Combines blogs with a map

http://woophy.com- - Allows to upload photos to the map

http://www.geocommons.com - Allows to visual-ize data sets on raster map base

http://www.jpgearth.com - Sharing, discovering, and browsing geotagged pictures on the web

http://www.mapbuilder.net - Allows to build maps

http://www.mapsalive.com - Combines maps, markers, photos, and text

http://www.OpenSourceGIS.org - A list of soft-ware tools for a variety of applications including mapping

http://www.tagzania.com - Allows to add a place tag and description to a map

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Key TeRmS AND DefINITIONS

Basemap: The map with background informa-tion that can be used as a reference for thematic information.

Cybercartography: Web mapping applica-tions.

Geocoding (or Geotagging): A form of location-related metadata such as geographic coordinates added to a map, website, photograph, etc.

Geographic Data Formats: File formats for computer storage and manipulation of geographic data (GPS exchange, GML, and XML).

Geospatial Web (Geoweb): Web-based geographically-related data and services.

Neogeography: A blend of personal, non-expert input and scientifically accurate non-geographic practices.

Participatory GIS (PGIS) and Public Par-ticipatory GIS: (PPGIS): Both PGIS and PPGIS provide information about places for decision-making. PGIS attempts to integrate widely held opinions about places with expert knowledge, whereas PPGIS focuses on widely held public opinions.

Raster Map: Shows the earth’s surface con-tinuously as in an aerial photograph, satellite image, or elevation surface.

Vector Map: Represents the surface of the earth by means of discrete points, lines and poly-gons, and are useful for storing data that have discrete boundaries such as streets and country borders.

eNDNOTeS

1 Neogeography should not be confused with “New Geography.” New Geography of the 21st century has been defined as a mobile geography, where personal location is know-able with GPS or other location-sensitive devices (Mateos & Fisher, 2007).

2 http://platial.com (as of June 30, 2008).3 http://plazes.com (as of June 30, 2008).4 http://www.geoportail.fr (as of June 30,

2008).5 http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/97.html (as of

June 30, 2008).