Lab 3: My map & Neogragrap

View Interesting Places I Visited in 2012 in a larger map

2012, the last year, was quite unique to me. First I finally had a lot of time to travel to different places that I had been dreaming about for a long time like Taiwan and Thailand. Also, in the autumn I came to LA alone to attend my university.  I used Google map to record some impressive places I visited last year. I put some pictures I took in the map to show these places better. I also found some interesting videos on Youtube and inserted them in the map. Don't forget to click the URL in Taipei 101 mall, this website will bring you a lot of fun. What's more, I used polygons to mark my neighborhood and my high school - both mean a lot to me. I used the lines to tell the sequence of my travel as well.

About Neogeography:

Unlike traditional GIS, neogeography enables amateur computer users to take part in the map making. It lets professional software go into every one's computer, and lets people who were previously blocked by technical barriers better understand what GIS is. Take Google maps as an example, even an amateur like I who knows only a little about GIS can still create my own map without difficulty. However, there are also problems of neogeography. The biggest issue is the reliability of the maps. Sometimes people may hold different opinions about one place and provide different information about the same place which can lead to confusion. What's more, as unprofessional map makers, ordinary computer users may make some mistakes in map making, and then cause additional problems to those use these maps. When maps made through neogeography cause problems, who should take the responsibilities can also be a big trouble.

Although neogeography is not as accurate as traditional GIS, we should admit that it is quite useful in the contemporary society. Making maps are like writing blogs which can show our experience and personality, which is really cool and attractive to many people. Neogeography makes it mach easier for ordinary people to get, to share and to process geography information, enabling more and more people to learn how to use geographic and spacial thinking to help them live better. It also makes GIS more popular among the people, encouraging people to discover ways of using geography information, and create more opportunities for the development of GIS. However, the wide spread of the concept "neogeography" may cause the misreading of GIS, because the highly visible content of neogeography may make people ignore some essential features of GIS like geographic modeling and spacial analysis.