Path of Rad.

For my map, I chose to show off a few of the places I enjoy eating, drinking, skateboarding, and shopping at that are around/near the Mission district of San Francisco, California.

Overall, I think that the “my maps” feature with Google Maps is interesting, however, I don’t personally see how or why I would ever really want to use it other than for this assignment simply because it requires me to sit down and recall where exactly these places are. Although, I think I am bias toward it because I don’t have a “smartphone” or one with the internet where I could update the map immediately. I would use this much more if I had a fancy phone that enabled me to access My Maps while I was out in the city because then whenever I come across a new restaurant/shop/skate spot that I like then I would just update my map for future reference for when I am in the area again.

The map is fun to interact with, but not all that visually pleasing. I can see how “my maps” would be potentially beneficial to a business like a hotel in a metropolitan area that could direct it’s customers to if they want to see some good restaurants or shops that are walking distance from the hotel itself. These days, most people bring along their laptops while on vacation, and since most hotels have Wi-Fi, then you can see how the hotel patron would be able to access the map on their own time to explore however they like.

After doing this assignment and the timeline one, I feel that my experience with the map is more enjoyable. The timeline seemed a little premature still and has a ways to go before it’s potential is reached. Also, I think I am more partial to the My Maps because they are similar, except that I rather share with people the location of places I have been as opposed to the time that I actually experienced them; that information seems trivial, especially if you can go back and edit the time for the particular event.

Diptiy Timeline Active Research

Some stuff I did during a week of my life! on Dipity.

This thing is kind of cool and has a lot of potential, I think. To me, it is basically like a Twitter, except more visually alluring perhaps since the timeline is animated and interactive. I don’t use Twitter, but I noticed you can sync up your posts on to the timeline. The only program that I was able to do this with was with my Last.fm account. So now you can see some of the songs I was listening to during the week of my life that I put topics for.

The timeline itself needs some work with the animation though I think because I noticed when I would add an event it wouldn’t show up but would show up on the “list” view. I’m not sure if it’s selective with what it wants to display, but someone needs to figure it out so all the event entries show up like they are supposed to. I also don’t think it’s necessary to have a “description” tab separate from the picture since the description shows up underneath that anyway. I would like it more too if the pictures you upload could be clicked and seen at full size.

Despite some of these minor flaws, I think there are definitely potential uses for interactive timelines such as Dipity. For example, I can see businesses using their company smartphones to enable employees to show their progress throughout the workday by adding new events and taking a picture of the task they were working on.

I wish I had access to this during grade school for History presentations. I think that it would have definitely made those presentations not so boring!