I came across a cool company called Urban Mapping today while reading a related Techcrunch article. The San Francisco-based company, founded in 2001, offers a variety of digital and not-so-digital mapping products. One such product, the neighborhood database which contains all types of info including “boundaries, names, relationships, and postal codes”, has just recently been incorporated into the Loki location-based search and navigation toolbar that uses the Skyhook Wireless positioning system. In the near future, Skyhook also plans to offer the neigborhood database API in a developer SDK that can be used to develop interactive location-based apps for non-commercial use.
A product of a little more interest is the Panamap, especially in an age where mapping is becoming increasingly digital. The Panamap is kind of like the pain-in-the-ass paper map that everyone has in the passenger side glove box of their vehicle, except it’s not made of cheap, crinkly paper. The Panamap is actually a layered plastic material that folds easily and features three or four maps in one. When the map is folded, the layers are superimposed on each other and depending on the viewing angle, you’ll still be able to see each map in its individual form-something Urban Mapping calls MapAction Technology. The maps display streets, neighborhood layouts, and subway routes.
Right now the Panamap is only available for Manhattan and Chicago, but we’re sure the company will extend its map offerings in the future. A map of either city will cost you about $20.
Some of you are probably wondering what a company is doing producing physically tangible maps in an era of digital mapping. Scrolling through Urban Mapping’s blog produced a little bit of insight into the minds behind the maps. The quotation was pulled out of Metropolis Magazine and is an explanation of why the printed book will endure despite the digitalization of information everywhere:
Still, the book is probably here to stay. Its resilience underscores what I call the power of maker tradition and user expectation. Proponents of electronic books argue that bound paper as we know it will eventually be replaced by newer technology, but that’s not likely to happen in the foreseeable future. The fact that some early e-books were designed to mimic the traditional reading experience by being about the same size as conventional titles and containing “pages” that “turn” emphasizes a kind of unwritten law of maker tradition: when replacing one technology with a newer one, the latter must resemble the former as much as possible.
