Lab3: Neogeography

View Daily Routine in a larger map


      This Neogeography map is created to show the routes and places which I must travel every day. The red line is the route for me to go to UCLA in the morning, and the blue, grey, purple, green, is my returning route. I took some videos when I was driving to school this week to show the traffic conditions at around 8:00a.m. and 5p.m.. I believe that my route is the best route for those people who live in Santa Monica, and need travel to UCLA in the morning and in the evening. The red zone shows the heaviest traffic area in Westwood, since the red zone is the intersection area of Wilshire Boulevard, Sepulveda Boulevard, and the exits and entrances of I-405 freeway. Also, I added several places where I must go every day, with time indicated in the title of the point, so that my friends can know more about my daily routine and where I am at certain times by looking at this map.

With the well development of several neogeography toolsets, such as Yelp, Map Quest and Google Maps, neogeography becomes very common nowadays. Although Neogeography is commonly used in our daily life, there are some pitfalls that users need to be aware of. First of all, neogeography maps are amateur maps; the reliability is not as good as typical GIS, since web maps relies on external, distributed data sources, and mostly, User Generated Content (UGC). No one will verify the data’s accuracy and if the data are up-to-date or not. Also, neogeography is in open source format. Amateur can edit the map easily and this will result in the decrease in reliability and accuracy. Furthermore, the symbols and quality of web maps are not unify; this will cause users’ frustration. For example, in my personal Google Map, I used a car as a freeway entrance, but other users may misunderstand that symbol represents a taxi station.

On the other hand, Neogeography still has its potential. The major advantages for neogeography are: It is real time processing and extremely user-friendly. When a map user decide to use web map, the only thing that the user needs, is a computer and internet access. They do not have to print maps, or to master the maps. Also, some of the web maps provide offline version, so only an electronic device is needed for using neogeography maps. Secondly, neogeography is flexible and multi-purpose. Users can create their personal maps; and in one web map, it can show different information, such as locations and weather at the same time. Thirdly, it is easy to integrate multimedias in neogeography. For example, users can embed videos and graphics into Google Maps. This will make the map more interactive and more informative.

The major consequence of neogeography may result in the downgrade in GIS, because neogeography is so user-friendly that user do not even requires time to learn how to use it. On the other hand, GIS is professional and requires a lot of time to master the elements. As the characteristics of human being, we usually choose the easier way to achieve our goal, so this may results in the raise of neogeography and the downgrade of GIS.