The Data Monkey Becomes A Neogeographer

Last week without evening realising it I took my first tentative steps to becoming a neogeographer. I didn't even know the term at the time, I heard the term coined for the first time two days later at a GIS seminar I attended (but more about that in a later post).


My Wedding Map: My first contribution to Neogeography:  View Larger Map

So what is a neo-geographer and how did I go about becoming one? Well there are a couple of fairly dry definitions of neogeography from Wikipedia and the Platial blog. But basically you become a neogeographer once you find an application out on the web and use it to start adding and sharing some information that you geo-reference (link to a location be that a point, line or polygon on a map).

I became a neogeographer when I dived into Google maps while I was logged in to my Googlemail account and I noticed for the first time the My Maps tab. I was looking for a way to mark on some locations on a map to email them to some relatives. I knew this was possible on Google Earth, which is a great tool but not something that you necessarily want to ask your retired aunt to download just to view your map. I was vaguely aware that it was now possible to do it easily on Google maps too.

In fact I was already aware that it was possible to add your own content on top of Google Maps. I had used Google Maps within a website I worked on 6-12 months ago where I used some quick and dirty javascript code to geo-reference a catalogue of publications (you can view the result here). But I was amazed to see that now 6 months or so on it was possible to create something very similar in a manor anyone could do, (even my retired aunt), and share the results with the world!

So I studiously spent 20 minutes creating my first little bit of neogeography before collecting the email link and sending it off to my relatives. You can view the Data Monkeys first bit of neogeography above...

The map shows some important locations involved in my wedding later this year, a rather boring subject if your not invited, I know. But my first little bit of neogeography all the same, and just in case you are wondering I will be adding more data to it as the date draws nearer....

Well done Google for creating such a cool tool!