As funding dries, Historical Society’s PhilaPlace unveils compelling new features

Update: April 1, 12:39 p.m.: Historical Sociey of Pennsylvania spokesperson Lauri Cielo clarified with us that though a lack of funding may affect the possibility of new features and expansion to other neighborhoods, the Web site will remain available to users and staff is budgeted to keep the project going with story uploads and maintenance. Project Director Joan Saverino makes note of these clarifications in her comment below.

Funding is running dry for an online historical project that is a powerful example of the intersection between forward-thinking technologists and history-minded academics.

Organizers of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania‘s three-year, $500,000 PhilaPlace project, an interactive documentation of “beyond the bell” 19th century ethnic and immigrant working-class history, are seeking new grants and innovative ways to keep the project sustainable.

The news comes as impressive new features were unveiled last week, coordinators tell Technically Philly.

Adjacent to PhilaPlace’s historic Google Map overlays that show the city’s dense development at the turn of the century, the site now features a “Streets” section that details ethnicity, land use, occupation and population, showing rapid change over time in several prominent Philadelphia neighborhoods.

Read more

Google launches Maps biking directions with Bicycle Coalition data

Google Maps new biking directions feature shows safe-to-ride bike paths in green. It's not the path we'd take to Citizen's Bank Park, but hey, Google does no evil, right?

You could say we’ve been welcoming of spring and the onset of the 2010 Grapefruit League. A bike ride down to Citizen’s Bank Park in a few weeks? Count us in. But how best to get there?

Google has launched a beta and buggy version of its new bike-friendly Maps features, including directions that utilize Philly bike paths and landmarks of local biking facilities, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia reported this morning.

Read more

Google Building Maker released for Philadelphia, 49 other cities

So where do you begin? Google Building Maker was released yesterday for 50 cities, including Philadelphia.

Google is offering up Web-based tools to citizens that would help move forward the company’s ambitious plans to have 3D representations of every building in the world.

Philadelphia is one of 50 cities worldwide and just 21 in the United States that are part of the first wave of Google Building Maker, as the program was described in a company release from yesterday. Building Maker is a way to create geo-located 3D models of buildings that would be visible in Google Earth, with the intention of creating an impressively detailed Web atlas, though criticism already surrounds, as always, the heavy reliance on free citizen labor.

Read more

Google Transit and SEPTA finally play nice

A screenshot of SEPTA's new integration with Google Maps

Let’s face it — SEPTA isn’t exactly quick on adapting new technologies.

It took a group of determined Web developers and some HTML scraping to make the delightfully useful iSEPTA iPhone application, SEPTA has repeatedly delayed the implementation of smart cards and many stations (*cough* Tioga *cough*) still do not sell tokens or make change.

But for all of its feet-dragging and delaying, the area’s transit system has finally accomplished its long-requested integration with one of the Web’s most used tools for travel planning.

Read more