Maps: Putting Ourselves in the Picture

UN is offering a week of interesting map interfaces and activities in the run up to the festive season. The last is Frappr, a social software application that runs on Google Maps to bring groups and locations together. So, communities of interest and communities of geography meet at last in the online world.

Here are answers to the questions you are no doubt forming if you haven't tried it out yet.

'1. What is Frappr?
Frappr is an online tool that lets you map out the zip code where you live, work, vacation, or anything else! You can then share your unique URL with friends and find out where the rest of them live and work in relation to everyone else.

'2. What does Frappr stand for?
Frappr = Friend Mapper

Further, you should know that: 'Frappr was created by Brian, Kun and James at Rising Concepts, who wanted to see where all their high school and college friends went after they graduated.'

And, so you get the gist of its references (Flickr, anyone?) and its functionality, here are some more answers.

'3. What's a shoutout?
A shoutout is simply a message to share with the Frappr group. People can type a personal message or something like "Hi everyone!"

'4. What's a tag?
Tagging your Frappr or Photos means to add keywords that are related to your map or photo. For example, if your Frappr or Photo is about iPods, you can tag on additional words such as "apple", "music", or "itunes".

'5. Be Our 1,000,000 Member!
We are almost to 1,000,000 members mapped! To celebrate, we would like to promote the group that has the one millionth member on our front page. Its our way of thanking everyone for their support of Frappr!'

Anyone fancy launching a map for UN readers?

Associated Link: Frappr

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