Wearing the badge “still beta,” Plazes, the free, network-based geolocation service, now sports a new coat of paint. Among the improvements is the Flash-based badge (above) and a much improved frontpage/dashboard that combines the map of known locations with the map of active users, formerly two separate screens.
On the downside, I sort of miss the old tracker. I love the icons on the new one, but there was a simplicity to the old list of recent plazes and favorite plazes that I liked. Also missing is the ability to display a time-range; instead, it simply displays the locations in date order. What I really want back is the ability to see, in one screen, all the places I’ve been in the past year, or month, or whatever (yeah, as Tim notes, it’s a bit exhibitionist, but…). Still, the new Plazes does add “hangouts,” which is sort of cool, you know, as a stalking aid.
The final downer is the useless of the “My World” map. It’s not that it shows I’ve only visited 1% of the world, it’s that it suggests I’ve visited all of the US — including Alaska and Hawaii. The map might be gratifying for the European developers, but I’d like more granularity.
Still, I continue to run the Plazer, and continue to look for new plazes to claim.