Memory Maps at Flickr

April 8, 2005 11:13 AM

Memory Maps at Flickr. Personal history annotated on Google Maps. via Grand Text Auto
posted by signal (32 comments total)

It was all started by our leader. I even had a little contest with my 4 memorymaps. Somebody guessed what they all had in common and I bought them a Flickr Pro account. And I ain't even done that for myself.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 11:40 AM on April 8, 2005

I had a lot of fun annotating mine. Though, I quickly realized that it wouldn't be amusing/interesting to anyone but me. A neat exercise in public personal reflection.
posted by shoepal at 11:55 AM on April 8, 2005

is there any way to find a memory map of a specific city amongst those on flickr?

are there any blogs dedicated to memory maps?
posted by subatomiczoo at 12:00 PM on April 8, 2005

Good point, subatomiczoo. I suppose in theory the memorymappers should tag their maps with the city/state so that one could, say, find all the memory maps of San Francisco, CA.
posted by shoepal at 12:09 PM on April 8, 2005

I find the memory maps are only interesting if I know the person, then I hang on every word.

shoepal, what's the url to yours?
posted by mathowie at 12:10 PM on April 8, 2005

Here's a bunch with the tags "memorymap" and "maryland." So apparently people are tagging city/state in addition to "memorymap(s)."

Mine is here.
posted by shoepal at 12:14 PM on April 8, 2005

this whole memory map thing is astonishing. kottke laid out the timeline a couple days ago:

"Earlier ths week, Google integrated their recently acquired Keyhole technology into Google Maps, allowing the user to toggle between the abstract map view and a satellite view. The addition was pretty big news, and I was pretty excited when I saw this feature, as were many others. Matt Haughey even did a Maps/Flickr mashup in creating a memory map of his childhood stomping grounds; others followed suit."

a very new phenomenon, no wonder the tags aren't universally explicit as to place. i'll give them a few hours!
posted by subatomiczoo at 12:21 PM on April 8, 2005

I'd like to see "lost virginity here" maps. Really.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 12:55 PM on April 8, 2005

I'm still tyring to figure out how some people do that neat thing with boxed marking mouseover commentary.
posted by Karmakaze at 1:20 PM on April 8, 2005

I created a couple, one for where I have lived for the past 6 months, one for where I lived for the 5 years before that, and one for where I lived for two years in middle school. It was amazing how much I'd forgotten from middle school.

My Photostream
posted by jeffkramer at 1:30 PM on April 8, 2005

I'm thinking modern-day reimagining of Slothrup, and he's stationed in Iraqn! I'm thinking bank! Scored by Elfman! We gotta get Elfman! Chiqita banana tie-ins!
posted by sonofsamiam at 1:39 PM on April 8, 2005

My contribution should be easy for anyone to guess.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 1:45 PM on April 8, 2005

kevinSkomsvold that was too easy.
posted by subatomiczoo at 1:58 PM on April 8, 2005

Heheh subatomiczoo. I figured it would be a slam dunk. Hard to stump this group.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 2:13 PM on April 8, 2005

I'm still tyring to figure out how some people do that neat thing with boxed marking mouseover commentary.

On a Flickr photo page, in the upper left just above the photo, there are a few little icons. One says "Add note" -- click that, a box will appear with a space to type. Drag to move or resize.
posted by statolith at 2:19 PM on April 8, 2005

Thanks statolith. That's why I hang out here, because the people are smarter than me.
posted by Karmakaze at 2:21 PM on April 8, 2005

> I'd like to see "lost virginity here" maps. Really.

Well, you asked....
posted by djwudi at 2:26 PM on April 8, 2005

Its been alot of fun to check out other people's maps as they put them up.

Mean Mr. Bucket, I lost my virginity in the great low-res wilds of New England, it wouldn't be that interesting a map. Now a map of my years at Arizona State and all the hookups there might be worth a go.
posted by fenriq at 2:52 PM on April 8, 2005

Here's mine, as long as we're all being exhibitionists.
posted by Karmakaze at 2:56 PM on April 8, 2005

Anyone got any Florida memory maps? Anyone wanna talk to me about their maps for a newspaper story?
posted by bunyap at 3:07 PM on April 8, 2005

I uploaded my shot of where I lost it, but that's a bit too much. I realized this sort of "stunt posting" would be the kind of thing you might regret later and made my shot private.
posted by mathowie at 3:19 PM on April 8, 2005

bunyap, if you want to talk to me about how I got the idea to do the first shot, my email is in my profile. I'd be happy to chat about it.
posted by mathowie at 3:19 PM on April 8, 2005

On a vaguely similar theme, the Degree Confluence Project is trying to map the planet at all the lat/longitude cross points in pix and stories.........could have been an FPP I guess but.......someone can run with it if they want to thresh it out more or in some deeper way.
posted by peacay at 3:29 PM on April 8, 2005

*chortle*
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 4:01 PM on April 8, 2005

> I uploaded my shot of where I lost it, but that's a bit too much. I realized this sort of "stunt posting" would be the kind of thing you might regret later and made my shot private.

I thought about that -- briefly, I'll admit -- but then decided that for me at least, it wasn't really worth worrying about. But then, I was light on details, and the humor amused me more than any personal worries. Besides, it had to happen somewhere...
posted by djwudi at 4:15 PM on April 8, 2005

Mine: Homer, Alaska. It's a shame that Alaska isn't better represented in the satellite photos.
posted by rhapsodie at 4:15 PM on April 8, 2005

I did mine a couple of days ago.
posted by grabbingsand at 4:23 PM on April 8, 2005

Here is my memory map, though it's not on Flickr (for the interested, Fotobuzz is an awesome and free applet that will do flickr-style annotations and optionally let site visitors also leave comments).

As others have said, it might be boring to read, but it was great fun to do.
posted by rafter at 5:39 PM on April 8, 2005

Here's mine. I spent my early childhood in a town of just a few hundred people. The satellite picture doesn't zoom all the way in for that area, which is too bad. It makes for a good annotated Flickr photo nonetheless.

The satellite photo at the same zoom level for the town I live in now spans several such frames.
posted by statolith at 6:03 PM on April 8, 2005

I find it oddly depressing that everywhere I've lived, with the sole exception of Manhattan, isn't considered worthy of high-res imagery by Google.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 10:10 PM on April 8, 2005

This has many similarities with a project I worked on recently: The Last Tourist.

It's a type of travel blog by an artist, with (handdrawn) maps to which his stories and photos are related. You can also "zoom in" by going to maps that are inside other maps.
posted by Icestorm at 1:34 AM on April 9, 2005

If anyone's still counting, here's mine.
posted by Jairus at 5:39 AM on April 9, 2005