A New Way to Map Our Fair City

By JOHN CAPONE

Updated 3:12 PM EST, Fri, Feb 27, 2009

Print Email Share TWITTER FACEBOOK

courtesy Pastiche

Forget Google Maps. There is a fun new toy in town. If by town you mean the interwebs and by toy you mean exceedingly geeky graphic depiction of blog keywords that is nevertheless a blast despite its slight eggheadedness. And, of course, that is exactly what you mean by that.

Pastiche, a visual map of the city's collective blog conciousness made of keywords set to the nabe name they were associated with, feels your economic pain — also your addiction to designer shoes, fascination with burgers, dedication to locavore culture and love of cupcakes. The makers of the tool put it this way: "New York City, in particular, has two realities: The reality of the physical environment, and the reality of the idea — of what the city and its diverse neighborhoods signify. Inseparably interwined, these two realities constantly continue to inform eachother." The "dynamic data visualization", which can be downloaded here, shows a geography of New York City's soul using words from blog articles that reference different neighborhoods. The words, assigned based on relevance and how recently they were used, are geographically positioned and a black background and navigable. it's also contantly updated by what happens in the blogoshere.

So, for instance if we start talking about Park Slope in this particular post, and say that everybody Park Slope pushes the same baby carriage, we'll show up later on the Pastiche map. If we reiterate it 20 times a day some interesting things could start to happen in Park Slope. This could be fun. We have some doozies in mind for Williamsburg, the West Village and the Flatiron District.