We’re still in the process of polishing the community group system today. I worked on a directory for the community groups, where they are sorted into state and county. Every community group operating in the same county gets grouped together, so that you can see all that’s getting done in a particular location. I also worked on a system of creating SuperMaps out of Personal Maps, which is a merge of many personal maps.
Today we switched over to a new “blue” color scheme for the sidebar. I know it feels a little strange at first, but you’ll get used to it - it has a more open feel than the slate gray.
In addition, we implemented the changes talked about in the last post where you add markers to personal maps intead of categorizing or tagging it.
We’re also gathering up many new icons that will go out in the near future!
Max
A few weeks ago, I posted about our categories feature and asked for feedback on how to make it more understandable to use. This led to an interface upgrade which was already in development, which simply made categorizing less cumbersome.
Now based on some of our feedback from that post, we have decided on a terminology change: categories will now be called “personal maps”. It will still work much the same way, but we want to emphasize the fact that you can use this feature to group markers together and create maps that are subsets of the larger Stickymap.
We expect this change over the next week. Let us know if you have any questions or feedback.
Today, our Quality Assurance team noticed a discrepancy on the placement of the American Museum of Natural History in Google Maps versus on Stickymap.
Take a look at this result from Google Maps. Notice that it puts you on Park Avenue on the Upper East Side. The actual museum is on the West Side, as the address tells you. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a map where you can simply move items or alert the administrators if it is incorrectly placed? Well, you can move markers on Stickymap. Take a look at the American Museum of Natural History on Stickymap below:
http://www.stickymap.com/mappage?m=1181
Over the last few weeks, we have been looking for teachers who would be interested in testing our community organization toolbox. The tool allows community organizations to create custom maps of their neighborhoods, share their maps with their community of users, and embed the maps on their websites. One group that we feel may wish to use the website are school teachers. We believe that school teachers who want to encourage their students to learn about their neighborhoods and develop strong writing and interviewing skills might be interested in creating a custom map together. Students would interview local residents about a location, write a short article, and upload photos to the website. The class can then create a custom map that they will be able to share with their peers. We do not believe that there is an easier and more exciting way to learn about geography!
If you’re interested in volunteering to beta test our community organization tool in your classroom, please let us know!
Dan
For the last few weeks, we have been refining the Community Organization custom mapping tool, that allows non-profits, community groups, associations, and societies to create custom maps of their neighborhoods. The tool will allow groups to share maps with their community members, and will provide an interactive interface for the groups to demonstrate their group’s impact. The map can easily be embedded in websites by copying a snippet of html code. If you are interested in joining our group of beta testers in creating maps for your project, please contact us.