Building a Web Site to Host our Work, Or, how to use Google to pretend that you are a web designer and get away with it.

Introduction:
          In keeping with the theme of presenting the class's work to a wide audience, this week's focus has been placed on the development of a website where our work can be effectively hosted and presented to the world at large.  Common consensus on Web Design is that there is no better way to gauge the effectiveness of a website than to open it up to the people and let them figure out how it's broken.  Short of this, the best thing an aspiring designer can do is build and test, build and test until either they are satisfied with the product or rapture cometh.  Information architect Steve Krug says of web usability “The problem is there are no simple “right” answers for most Web design questions (at least not for the important ones). What works is good, integrated design that fills a need—carefully thought out, well executed, and tested.”
          Therefore, the time has come to begin developing web pages that can present the information processed in this course, and that has been the focus of this week's work. 

Methods: 
Bios
Embedding Web Maps

http://www.weebly.com/weebly/main.php
Sources:

http://webdesign.about.com/od/webdesign/a/aa123002a.htm

Krug, Steven. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. New Riders: 2005.

Rydne, Anna. "How to look good on Paper: 4 Examples of Great Bios." Ret. 10/27/2013
 http://communicateskills.com/2012/08/05/look-good-on-paper/

Story Mapping in Google

Introduction:

          Geographer Alistair Bonnet believes that "The core concerns of a geographical education have emerged as the core concerns of the global citizens of the twenty-first century."(98).  To that end, an effort to refine our story-mapping skills and provide a wider spectrum of tools with which to present our work, this week  we have practiced story-mapping with a new Google Earth Extension: Tour Builder.  Google reaches over one billion people every month, there is no greater platform for sharing information across the world than with the tools that this company has developed. Fig 1 displays the reach of Google as compared to the next largest web locations in 2011, when the company first passed the one billion threshold.

           Some differences exist between the two different methods of story mapping, and the ultimate goal of this week is to decide what will be used for the final project. Furthermore, a final project proposal will be put forward this week to outline the work that I will be doing for the rest of the semester.

Figure 1: a comparison of web traffic. Source: digital strategy consulting.

Methods:
          The first step in creating a story map with this process is making sure that the computer being used for this project has the necessary Google tools. Google Earth needs to be installed, as does the "Tour Builder" extension (currently in beta). Both can be downloaded for free from the links given, provided that you have the permissions on your network to do so *ahem*. You will also need a Google account.

figure 2: adding a location

          From here, the process could not be easier. Unlike in the ESRI software, photos can be uploaded to and hosted on Google within the interface of the Tour Builder, directly from your computer. In order to locate them in the tour, simply search for or otherwise locate the place that you wish to place a tour marker, and place it (fig 2)! After the location is set, Tour Builder then allows users to upload pictures, set dates for the location, and write a description of the piece (fig 3). This is also where developers can upload KML track logs or points as layers to the map, unfortunately the extension does not support shapefiles. Saving is automatic, and upon completion of the project the developer has a link that can be shared.

figure 3: adding information

Results:

figure 4: the final tour

          Figure 4 is a screenshot of my final interactive story map, which can be found here.  In the left window is a the image that was uploaded and an introduction to the tour is displayed. As users click the "next" button, of course they are guided through the tour in much the same way as ESRI's tours worked.  There were two major differences experienced through this project with ArcGIS Online.
          1) Google was easier. AGO gave a number of classmates difficulty in creating their product, whereas the google platform was a straightforward as could be hoped for.  Google was user-friendly, for the developer, and ESRI was simply not. If I was making an application to share in a casual environment, Google wins eight days a week.
          2) ESRI provides options. In a perhaps foreseeable trade-off between functionality and ease-of-use, the ArcGIS Online platform allowed me far greater control over the final presentation of my product. Furthermore, I was able to add far more types of geospatial data where the Google Platform was relegated to only KML and GME. I could edit each and every color, box, and location in the template from ESRI but with Google you are more or less stuck with what you've got. However, a final note, the Tour Builder is still in Beta. 

Sources:

Bonnet, Alistair. "What is Geography?" Sage, 2008.

"Top 5 global websites: Google breaks record with 1 billion monthly users." Ret. 10/20/13. http://www.digitalstrategyconsulting.com/intelligence/2011/06/top_5_global_websites_google_b.php

An Introduction to Story Mapping

Introduction:

          This past week has been spent by introducing ourselves to storymapping on ArcGIS Online. In the 1985 Address from AAG President Pierce Lewis to the American Association of Geographers, Lewis takes great pains to illustrate the importance of description and story telling to the field of Geography. After establishing that Americans, while geographically challenged, "possess a strong innate curiosity about the world," Lewis extorts the Association "We need to make our geographic work more accessible and attractive to the general public." (472) Storymapping is a new technology that brings new-found accessibility of geographic information to a global audience, and as noted by Lewis in 1985, it plays on the geographer's strongest suit: the almost bizarre love for maps that every geographer innately seems to understand. "...our best works of geographic description, I think, have been cartographic." (470).

          To this end, the one prime objective for this class is going to be making our work accessible to the public. Generations after the first World War, in which 9 million men and women died over the course of a mere four years, the one hundredth anniversary of this tremendous and indelible scar on the face of history is one mere year away. And ESRI has worked to make the process of developing a new type of cartographic tool, the Storymap, more accessible than ever. ).

          The Story Map is a web application that hybridizes social media with GIS. The developer of this application can stitch photographs, video, tags, and comments into a map which they developed to showcase some geographic data or, of course, tell a geographic story. For example, a good story map may show the origins and destinations of Titanic passengers, the route it traveled, and some ancillary information relevant to its fateful voyage (fig 1). The results of our work this week should provide each student with an introduction to the story mapping platforms provided by ESRI through ArcGIS Online, and yield a web app that allows viewers to cycle through an overview of trip highlights and some of the work – and fun –that was had in France. Mostly the work though. Mostly.

figure 1: an example story map provided by ESRI

Methods:
          The ArgGIS Online website has several templates that utilize ESRI's ArcGIS for Apache Flex to make the process of building a storymap simple.  Photos can be hosted through ESRI's online servers, or on popular image sharing websites such as pinterest, flickr, or facebook.  From there, they can be imported directly onto ArcGIS Online and if they don't already have geographic coordinates attached to them, the images can be "drag-and-dropped" right onto their appropriate location in the map viewer application.  After creating a map in ArcGIS Online, complete with basemap and tracklogs data, the map is shared through a web application.  I used the "Map tour" template provided by ESRI, so with each image uploaded the developer can edit a title, description, and order for the image in the tour as the end user is guided through the information across the map.  Figure 2 provides a screenshot of the process.  Finally, the settings were manipulated to develop an aesthetically pleasing end product.


figure 2: editing an image's properties

Results:
          Figures 3 and 4 display a screenshot of my final interactive story map.  In the left window is a large resolution image that can grab an audience's attention, and in the right window is the geographical location for that image displayed over a colorful yet clean basemap.  Also included in the project is the tracklog from a student's handheld GPS which shows the progression of the trip.  As users click the left or right arrows to the side of the displayed images, they move through the tour chronologically as I designed it.  Along the bottom is a timeline where users can skip to any individual image in the lineup which they desire, and a caption is displayed for each.

Figure 3: creating a map tour of the Western Front

Figure 4: the final story map

          Now, end users can gain a quick overview of the field work done on this trip and learn a bit about the Western Front while they are at it. Here is a link to the map itself, for your viewing pleasure.

Sources:

Lewis, Pierce. "Presidential Address: Beyond Description." The Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 1985. 465-478.

"Geography, class, and fate: Passengers on the Titanic." ESRI. http://storymaps.esri.com/stories/titanic/ accessed 10/14/13