Mapping the living World
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012 by Roberto Saracco
Google maps are great and they change the way we see information. They are more and more “localized”. Looking for a hotel and seeing a map along with it is just normal. Taking a photo and inserting it in an album to see it becoming part of a map is also a usual experience for people with a Mac and iPhoto.
Now, thanks to Livemapp, you can expect to change your perception of the “map” once more.
The idea is simple, the result is catchy!
Everybody nowadays has a phone with a camera and more and more have an embedded GPS. That is the case of the people wandering around with the iPhone latest models. The Livemapp app, so far only available on iPhones but soon to be on the Androids flocks 
as well, let you take a phone and post it on the web. It ends up on a map so that people looking at the map through Livemapp will see it.
It is a way to add on the map the sights (and I am pretty sure the sounds as well in a short while). You may take a look at the place you are in, or the ones your friends are at the moment, and see what’s up. You can also go back in time to see what was it some times ago. And you can elect to visualize only the most recent photos in those places where lot of people are shooting and posting.
The apps can be enriched with new functions, I suppose. Why not see only the photos posted by your friends, so that you can follow their wanderings. And similarly post your photos for the eyes of your friends only.
And what about a etcher going on vacation in Greece: she might take pictures of places she will be talking about in the new semester and add comments to them. Once back in the classroom she can enable her maps to her students to see and commit upon….
The real kick is the possibility of creating your interpretation of a space and share it with others. The future, I am convinced, will be more and more like this, each one of us an actor and a spectator, in some cases living the act as it unfolds.
