Week 3- Neogeography

View Marin County in a larger map

My family and I lived in Novato, California, which is in Marin County, from the summer of 2001 until this past summer of 2010 (though I started living in LA in 2009 for college). Throughout my eight years of living in Marin, I did a lot of exploration. On this map I marked some of the places that grew to be some of the most important places to me.
Thanks to neogeography, I am able to show these places on a map with relative ease. The convenience of having the map, and then being able to lay out points, lines, and polygons over it, marking wherever is desired, is great. Even beyond just marking places or routes on the map, embedding links, photos, and videos within these makes the experience of the place much more real, in a sense. Neogeography is a huge collaborative effort of people from all over the world and it has the potential to contribute greatly to our knowledge and understanding of the world.

While neogeography has the potential to contribute to our knowledge and understanding, it also has the power to detract from it. Unfortunately, not all people are honest, and even those who are are capable of making mistakes. The accuracy of mash-up maps is certainly something to be wary of. Someone can falsify information about a place, whether on purpose or by accident, and thus provide viewers with wrong information. A viewer may believe things to exist that in reality do not.

Neogeography has both positive and negative consequences. Positively, users are able describe place to others in an unforeseen way, being able to digitally update information and add multimedia. Marking online maps though neogeography as opposed marking on paper maps is by far a much cleaner, easier, and more attainable process. It is also a more environmentally friendly process as well, saving paper and thus, at least to some extent, limiting deforestation. Negatively, not only can people can falsify information about places as mentioned above, but people also have the potential to exploit others through neogeography, and a decline in privacy may result in consequence. Someone can make a mash-up map of celebrity homes, for example, and suddenly crowds could swarm the properties in efforts to get glimpses of their favorite movie stars.

Week 2- Beverly Hills Quadrangle

1. The name of the quadrangle is the Beverly Hills Quadrangle.

2. The names of the adjacent quadrangles are Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, and Inglewood.

3. The quadrangle was first created in 1966.

4. For horizontal datum, North American Datum of 1927 is used, though North American Datum of 1983 is also represented by off-set corner ticks. For vertical datum, National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929 is used.

5. The scale of the map is 1:24,000.

6. a) 1,200 meters
    b) 1.89 miles
    c) 2.64 inches
    d) 12.5 centimeters

7. The contour interval is 20 feet.

8. Coordinates of:

    a) Public Affairs Building
        34.07441°, -118.43931°
        34° 4' 27.876", -118° 26' 21.516"

    b) Tip of Santa Monica Pier
        34.00749°, -118.49982°
        34° 0' 26.9634", -118° 29' 59.3514"

    c) Upper Franklin Canyon Reservoir
        34.09801°, -118.41201°
        34° 5' 52.836", -118° 24' 43.2354"

9. Elevation of:

    a) Greystone Mansion (in Greystone Park)
       550 feet
       167 meters

    b) Woodlawn cemetary
       140 feet
       42.7 meters

    c) Crestwood Hills Park
       620 feet
       189 meters

10. The UTM zone of the map is zone 11.

11. The UTM coordinates for the lower left corner of the map are 362000m E, 3763000m N.


12. 1,000,000 square meters are contained within each cell of the UTM gridlines.


13. The points in which the elevation profile crosses UCLA are demarcated by blue squares.

14. The magnetic declination of the map is 14 degrees east.

15. The intermittent stream between the 405 and the Stone Canyon Reservoir flows from north to south.

16.