Platial

“Platial enables anyone to find, create and use meaningful maps of Places that matter to them. We hope it can connect people, neighborhoods, cities and countries through a citizen-driven common context that goes beyond geopolitical boundaries. We are building it, because we adore Places.”Platial is essentially a Google Maps hack that allows you to annotate and share maps with anyone on the World Wide Web. While it’s easy enough to narrow down and find places you care about (there are quite a few entries on Toronto, for example) services such as these cause me to wonder about who they are for: local psychogeographers or tourists looking for the “good” bakery rather than the chain? The story in the “About Platial” section was essentially about tourists, and so it inspired a slightly disdainful reaction in me at first, as I thought to myself, “do the locals need to look up where the “good” bakery is? No, they probably already frequent the good bakery.” What kind of information do locals share? Perhaps the “Sense of Smell” map? Once the quirky applications of platial.com become apparent, a much more inclusive and interesting picture is painted about places.