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Play: a free map editor from Placemark
A version of Placemark, for everyone!
👆 Fresh content!
Changelog: March 13
Custom data in the Figma plugin, plus better support for Firefox Private Windows
Changelog: February 5 - Introducing Circles!
Improvements including circle drawing, CSV import types, and better autocomplete in the table
Placemark for Figma
Dive into cartographic design in the comfort of Figma with Placemark's new Figma plugin
Announcing Folders
Organize your map data into nested folders
Changelog: December 15
Rectangles, right angles, and open source modules!
Changelog: November 21
Big and little improvements to how you can make custom maps and edit geospatial data with Placemark
Announcing Layouts
Embracing attributes and improving Placemark's table editing!
Dependency management in practice
A technical deep-dive into how Placemark deals with the complexity of JavaScript dependencies
Code patterns, 2022
My current habits for writing the TypeScript code that makes Placemark tick
A simpler router progress bar for this Next.js application
How we built a concise implementation of a page loading bar, just using the Placemark application's existing ingredients
Announcing multi-feature selection, SVG export, and lasso selection
A slew of new features that make it easier to style maps and use them everywhere
Stacking overlays
A big step forward for using Placemark with satellite and historical imagery
Polyline: a spruced-up polyline utility
A new encoded polyline converter that works well with TypeScript and modern applications.
Changelog: September 26
Share maps as gists, rotate features, and sign up without needing a credit card!
Sharing maps
An easy way to communicate data & analysis with just a link.
Collaboration technical deep-dive
Gritty details on how Placemark implements collaboration.
Betterknown: a new WKT & EWKT parser
Placemark's new open source WKT & EWKT parser, and a review of our existing open source modules.
Changelog: August 16
Better WKT support, hide individual features, import CSV files with GeoJSON columns, and more!
Joining data and more
Geospatial data meets tabular, with the new join feature
Moving features
Feature in the wrong place? Not anymore.
Changelog: July 15
Great arcs, big tables, better statistics, and more!
Placemark thematic maps, v2
Making thematic maps, custom styles, and exporting better than ever.
Tech update
Which of the parts that make up Placemark have changed, what's new, and some ideas about what's next.
Changelog: June 28
OSM XML support, duplication, basic support for iPads, bulk invites, and bug fixes in this week's changelog.
Making maps with addresses
New support for importing CSV and Excel files with address data, plus adding locations to the map after searching.
A big boost for properties
Rich text, images, improved keyboard shortcuts, and a lot of improvements for the data that lives in geospatial files.
Introducing our free map file converter
Announcing Placemark's new free map file converter, which runs in your browser and supports converting lots of file formats to and from each other.
Placemark & Tom on the MapScaping Podcast
Chatting with the MapScaping podcast about Placemark, its start, future, and the unique approach I've taken so far.
Changelog: May 31
Feature better attribute editing with the table plus labels for features on the map!
Changelog: May 23
Dragging, right-clicking, importing, drawing… it's all better with a big batch of improvements!
Changelog: May 13
Friday update: here's what's new! FlatGeobuf and fixes and features.
Using folders to organize your map data
Nestable, nameable, hidable folders are a great way to organize your maps.
Changelog: May 2
Announcing XYZ layer support, faster collaboration, faster API, edit feature IDs, and better polygon rendering.
Changelog: April 25
Just another Monday, with some improvements, fixes, and commentary!
Announcing Placemark
Announcing a big new feature: the sign up button.
Engineering round up: Optimization
How we make Placemark faster, so you can make maps faster.
Placemark on the Geomob Podcast
A fun conversation with Ed Freyfogle about geo and business
The evolution of data-parsing leniency in Placemark
Accepting not-quite-valid data so you can make maps instead of fixing XML.
It's still too hard to make maps
It's too hard to make a map. It's also hard to say what making a map is.
2021 Map technology in review
From image formats to satellites, what seemed inspiring in geospatial technology this year.
Why we switched to Webflow
Why it might be a good idea to build your marketing site with a different technology stack than the one your application uses.
How we implement undo/redo to make maps fearlessly
Inspired by Figma, here's a peek into how we implement mutable, command-oriented, local history.
Maps, a decade later
Why maps are still interesting in 2021
Keeping the bugs away
How we use error logging, code analytics, uptime monitoring, and continuous deployment to power map editing tools you can rely on.
Escaping engineering FOMO
How to stop worrying about using the fastest web framework and just ship the thing.
Good magic with TypeScript
Some of our favorite open source modules that perfectly work with TypeScript and make our lives happier.
Engineering round up
From DNS to SQL to design, here's what's been changing with the Placemark map editor.
Choosing atoms
This is one of those hard-to-pin-down engineering concepts of how to shape your data, which trickles into the whole system design.
Values
Here are the goals and principles we're keeping in mind, building this geospatial application.
Thoughts on Collaboration
How we use Replicache to power real-time, multiplayer, collaborative map editing.
Tech brief: JSON Pointer
How JSON pointer lets you target and modify certain parts of JSON objects, and how this can be really useful for GeoJSON.
GitHub issues-only project management
My thoughts on why project management applications are often overkill, and using simple tools forces you to adopt more efficient practices as a small team.
Components: react-aria
Here's why we use react-aria, a React component library made by Adobe and focused on control and accessibility.
Hosting: Render
Here's why we use Render, instead of options like AWS, to host our map editor.
The application stack: Blitz
There are lots of different ways to build a web application. It's about choosing the one that fits your problem area - here's why I ended up with Blitz.js, a level on top of Next.js, for Placemark.
Stack thinking
Here's my framework for how to think about some fundamental choices I have to make when building a company.