Thursday, March 09, 2006

Social atlas for friends and burritos

Social atlas for friends and burritos | CNET News.com: "People obsessed with famous film shoots or even the tastiest local burritos have a new outlet for their passions: Online maps.
Platial, a two-month-old upstart, lets people save personal places of interest to a Google map, and then share those landmarks with friends or the community at large, creating a kind of 'social atlas,' according to the company. People can also collaborate on Platial maps, which like many other so-called Google mashups are built on top of the Google Maps APIs, or application program interfaces.
Already, Platial.com has amassed 100,000 points of interests from its members, including home addresses, biodiesel fueling stations, and a map of all the taco trucks in Oakland, Calif. Diane Eisner, one of three co-founders of Platial, said that one of the most popular maps on the site points to the best street food in New York City.
'We call it 'auto-geo-biography,'' Eisner said Wednesday during a press briefing here at O'Reilly's Emerging Technology conference. That's because 'the traditional views of place don't represent our relationship' to them."

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