Hypercities

On the upper left corner of Hypercities, click on the “Add Media” button. Clicking it shows the three types of objects that HyperCities allows: points, lines, and polygons.

A point is just a single place on a map, which can be represented by an (x,y) coordinate pair.

A line is used to trace a path. It can contain many vertices, and can be used to form shapes.

A polygon is a shape. Clicking inside a shape activates the polygon; this is the difference between a polygon and a line. Clicking inside a closed line does not activate the info bubble for that object. Clicking inside a polygon does.

Once you have chosen what kind of object you want to create and its location, you will see the “Add Media” frame on the right.

Here you can set the title of your object, timespan,  license, and description of the object.

Author name is automatically filled in from the nickname you supplied when you registered. The author name can be changed individually for any object.

To set the time, you can type the year, month and date by either clicking on the fields or tabbing between them. You can also use the arrow keys to change these numbers. Typing “-” (the minus sign) toggles between “BCE” and CE (when “BCE” is not displayed). The date on the right must always be later than the date on the left; HyperCities will prevent you from entering an end date earlier than the start date, and vice versa.

The description field allows rich formatted text. To edit the HTML source, click on the “HTML” icon.

A note: many users compose the descriptive text in another program and then copy and paste the text into HyperCities. If you do this, it’s best to use a plain text editor like Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac), and do your formatting in HyperCities itself, unless you know HTML. Avoid word processing programs like Microsoft Word; Word generates HTML that look stranges when it is displayed in HyperCities. HyperCities also edits out some formatting that Word puts in, so generally, it’s best to write the text in Notepad (or TextEdit), without formatting, and use HyperCities to do the formatting. The HyperCities text editor is WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

Add images by clicking the “Insert/Upload Image” icon. Videos, however, must be hosted on other video websites such as YouTube, Vimeo, etc., and they can be embedded on Hypercities by copying and pasting the embed code from the hosting service.

To display base maps with your object, click on the “Select Base Map” button. This shows a list of maps that are visible in the current viewport and timespan. To select a map, just click on it. Use the “x” near the map to remove it.

If you want other objects to show up with your object, click on the “Select Other Items” button. You can use this window just like the regular collection list. Just check the items on that you want to appear.

Once you’re done, save your object by clicking “SAVE” on the lower right corner.

Click here to see how to add your object in a collection.

HyperCities Geo-Scribe, a project proposal by the HyperCities team, has been selected to receive one of the first Google Digital Humanities Research Awards. Geo-Scribe will be an extension to HyperCities, a mark-up tool that brings together books and maps in a collaborative authoring environment for exploring the spatial dimensions of literature. The tool will allow users to create maps of places related to books, and each point on each map will be linked back to specific pages in the books. Users will be able to browse all books that mention a certain time and place, and to browse all the maps created by users that are linked to a specific book. Geo-Scribe emphasizes multiple mappings and multiple perspectives and will add a social, participatory component to the mapping projects that have already been undertaken by Google Book Search.

Below is a hypothetical screenshot of what the project might look like, taken from the proposal:

For more information, please see the announcement from the Official Google Blog: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/07/our-commitment-to-digital-humanities.html

Created by Xarene Eskandar, a graduate student at UCLA, this HyperCities collection curates the “media history” of the election protests in Iran, beginning on June 13, 2009, and continuing through December.  As a series of richly curated maps, the collection geo-locates and chronologically organizes more than 800 YouTube videos, Twitter feeds, Flickr photographs, and other forms of documentation.  The result is the largest, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, and sometimes even minute-by-minute web documentation of the election protests in Iran.

For an overview of this project, click on the YouTube link below:

To view the collection, click on the image below.  Depending on your screen width, you may want to “slide” the collection open by dragging the divider between the map and the narrative panel.  You can also switch between map, earth, and satellite view in HyperCities.

The mobile media tours of LA’s Historic Filipinotown (HiFi) were a  resounding success with the participation of scores of students, community activists, politicians, and members of the general public exploring the history of HiFi.  Participants followed the pathways of four immigrants through different periods in HiFi’s history on GPS-enabled Nokia Tablets and in an authentic Jeepney, a refurbished transport jeep from WWII.  The content was produced by Pdub youth, who worked with Public Matters, the Pilipino Workers’ Center, UCLA’s REMAP, and HyperCities, to produce the digital media tours. Check out the videos below and click here for a news story about the event.