I've been thinking about the proliferation of Google Map API hacks. I gave a talk last Saturday on the topic of Locative Media at the 4S Conference. The idea was to introduce the ways in which location and networked publics are creating new kinds of social formations. I realized that there are tons of "may-as-well" sort of Google Map mash-ups. I think projects such as Foundcity.net, platial.com and other sites that use Google to create a map of what you found/did/saw/lost where is a cool idea, but I'm not entirely drawn into it. That may be me, but the idea of another so-called community site that's now about creating location-based annotations is not, at this moment, entirely convincing to me.

But, I've said that before when I was building my ASAP project. I had a question:

"even after several preceeding spatial annotation projects - PDPal Eyebeam, PDPal MSG, PDPal Times Square and the upcoming PDPal Database Imaginary - I still feel challenged when it comes to understanding why it is at all interesting to author one's experiences spatially. I mean, I'm obviously drawn to the idiom, and I've learned alot about the semantics of the process from people like Calvino, Woods, Soja, Harvey, Haraway, and others, but there still feels like there's more work to be done on my part to understand with some precision and lucidness why it seems "right" to cobble together visual maps, a GPS rig, photography, the web and so forth."

I still have that question. Maybe it's a problem of the delivery of the experience. Or maybe it's the same challenge one feels when authoring experiences or creating a diary or log. The challenge of the author still looms — what do I say? how do I say it? will anyone find this interesting? do I find this interesting?