Map it! Geocoding opens new visual access to information

Google's Marissa Mayer this week at the DLD conference in Munich announced new features to come for Google maps and Google earth. The triumph march of Google's geo concept all over the web is incredible.

Many people in the traditional media, especially from the Offline Taliban faction (still convinced that the internet nightmare could be over one day), still renounce the relevance of map like mash ups as some sort of unserious triviality. Even web experts like Mattias Kretschmer express their scepticism.

I'm pretty sure that displaying information in a geo context will become indispensable. The geographical context uncovers hidden dimensions of facts and data.

One of the most impressive examples is the Local Explorer of the Washington Post . The team of Rob Curely developed a mash up concept which combines data for crime, home sales, schools and places to a unique tool of local orientation.

Last week EveryBlock was launched by Adrian Holovaty, a pioneer in geo mapping for information scenarios. It provides relevant local data and information for San Francisco, New York and Chicago. It's promise: "The easiest way to keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city."

In Germany various community sites and point of interest portals have started to use Google maps as an additional layer for providing context and orientation. In 2007 the first newspaper applications went online like Saarbrücker Zeitung or Der Westen/ Westdeutsche Allgemeine , the largest regional paper in Germany. The basic intention is to display local news from the editors in a geographical context. People can easily check what is going on in their local neighbourhood by access the news via maps as the quickest and most logical of all entries. With maps as a visual access they no longer need to waste their time by browsing through long lists of text stories.

The next step will be that private users and citizen journalists can upload their content including the geo reference. Publishers plan to add local classified ads or sponsored information by local shop owners, public services or cinemas, clubs, bars and restaurants. I guess it is one of the most convincing approaches to revitalise the real strength of regional newspapers - their local competence and credibility.

At dpa-infocom we just launched a gecoded version of our regional multimedia wire services (dpa-RegioLine). Bild.de has based the beta version of it's Berlin navigator on this feed. So far we add an official geo co ordinate for towns and cities. In the cases of Berlin and Hamburg, the largest German cities we provide the data for the city districts. Gerd Kamp, head of our application development and Mr. Geonews, gives some technical background.

In late spring we plan to attach the complete address to the regional dpa news wherever useful. Besides we intend to geocode our main world newswire dpa-InfoLine. Users should be allowed to follow news via news maps from the local to the world level - simply by zooming in and out.

By defining standards and workflows we hope to motivate more and more publishers and editors to go for the geo option and add geographic metadata to their content. Map it! Another task visual journalists and story tellers will have to embrace.

The eyeblogger manifesto: visual journalism and visual story telling

Eye bloggers believe in the „iconic turn“ as it describes the medial shift of paradigm from text towards image.

In the past the image followed and supported the text content. In the convergent media worlds text will follow more and more the visual content message (even print will continue to become more and more visual).

Related to the iconic turn is the term „visual literacy“ , defining the intellectual human capability to decode and interpret images.

The visual shift, the growing media dominance of picture, video, info graphic or other visual forms of content vs. text will accelerate in the upcoming years. The arguments are apparent:

1. Text is an inconvenient and highly demanding access to information. It will become more and more a tool of the information elite. Mass media on the other hand will attract users more and more via a more emotional and less complicated visual access.

2. Within the next five years TV and web will converge. IPTV and video streaming on internet portals will replace classic broadcast TV. Video will become a strong third visual format besides photo and info graphics.

3. The convergence of TV and web will resolve the divide in user experience between lean back (TV) and lean forward (web) scenarios. The hybrid combination of TV and web requires graphical interfaces to navigate from the couch.

4. Advertisement is shifting from the established media to the web. The new tools to measure reach and justify ad spendings are changing. Clicks and page impressions will be replaced by view time. A pre condition for this new criteria are visual and interactive contents with high stickiness, which attract people and keep them on the site as long as possible.

5. Technically VDSL broadband allows complex and data rich visualisations. User who can afford these high speed accesses, expect a new user experience. New combinations of visuality, interactivity and multimediality will in their potential beat all established media formats (e.g. world of warcraft).

6. All media platforms converge. Within a couple of years users will hardly be able to distinguish the web portals of print-, TV- or internet only providers since they will all offer the same elements of text, picture, info graphic, audio and of course video.

7. Visualisation still seems to be a theoretical subject for information scientists and digital artists. Now it is time to use the new opportunities for professional visual story telling and develop a visual journalism. This is especially true since images and visualisation can easily be manipulated or be misinterpreted. Linking the emotionality of images to the preciseness of the word is a highly journalistic duty and profession.

8. The convergence of digital platforms will lead to a convergence of journalistic job profiles. The basic competence of print and broadcast editors will get more and more similar. Focus and joint fundament will be visual web formats.

9. Visual journalism will pose new requirements to editorial training. A new profile of visual editors will unite classical journalistic abilities with the competence for visuality, interactivity and mulimediality.

10. Visual content can easily inform and entertain a global audience, regardless what language they speak. It thus ideally meets the requirements of the web as the only truly global medium.

11. Even in e-learning visual story telling provides new opportunities for handicapped people suffering from dyslexia and illiteracy.