Google my map! Neogeography

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View Fun and Historical Alamosa Traveling Plan in a larger map


This is my map for my future trip to a small town called Alamosa in Colorado. I like exploring small towns, there are always something historical and cultural that you can't tell until you really go there.  It basically maps out the route that I would take if I really go there. It would be a two-day trip and  I will go there by plane, so arriving at the Alamosa Regional Airport. Then, I will be going to different places like Alamosa National Refuge, Zapata fall etc and ending my first day by camping at night, which would be the best way to feel the power of nature. In the next day, I would start my journey from Little Medano Creek and going for a relaxing hot spring spa afterward. And I would staying in Comfort Inn for that night. It would be an amazing trip for nature-lovers since there are many reserved places and natural landscape in and around Alamosa. 


Neogeography is a fun way to play around with maps and locations. There is a huge potential for this new-found technology, and it is getting more and more important, from business to own-use for navigation. It is easier for us to make our own maps now, everyone can create one in their own laptops, even small kids to elderly or those without any geographic knowledge.  It also increased our geographic awareness. For example, People nowadays can get direction and other information before actually going out simply from Google map or other Mashups.  So that people won't get lost and probably can get to their destination more on time, also they can share their maps online or printed with their friends and co-workers for navigation to business uses. 


Although Neogeography gives us a lot of fun and convenience, there are still some pitfalls in it! Since everyone can make their own maps, there could be some different standard of expressing oneself, so it could be confessing or hard to understand others' maps. Some maps can be misleading or easily to be misunderstood, since most of the Mashup creators are not professional in making maps, they just believe everything on the website or did something really wrong without noticing it. That's why we have to use our geographic knowledge to analyse different maps from different sources before really trusting everything in the Internet! The bad thing is we have to determine the quality, accuracy, reliability and responsibility of the maps that we are using, but sometimes we just don't look at the map carefully. 


However, I think Neogeography's good outweighs its bad. It makes it easier and more accessible for everyone to the geography by creating their maps. We can still learn a lot from Mashups, and most of the time, it is reliable to use Google Map or the other resources. It would be best if the technology can overcome the cons of Neogeography. By that time, I believe many people can be a professional geographer, too!