meograph

Meograph adds paid licenses

March 28, 2013

We’ve been big fans of Meograph since we first discovered it last May. Their “four-dimensional storytelling” makes it very easy to create digital stories that include audio, video, images, text and map them all as the story progresses.
Since their launch last year, they’ve added more than 26,000 users to the site who have created over 36,000 meographs. Even more impressive is that it has been used in over 1,300 schools and is growing by 30 percent each month!

To help generate some revenue from the growing service, Meograph is now launching some paid plans for educators, starting at $19.99/year. The plans include features such as ad removal, private sharing, class management and a few other items. Of note is that the free plans remain intact for everyone, whether they’re in an educational environment or not.

All in all, it seems to be a nice way to handle the move to paid licenses. The free product remains available and feature-rich, but there are now some nice add-ons for those that use the product heavily in their classroom.
Congrats to founder Misha Leybovich on the continued success of Meograph! Try it out for yourself at Meograph.com, or learn more about these new educational features in this article on TechCrunch.

Meograph adds drap-n-drop, longer narrations and more

January 25, 2013

Meograph started out as a pretty neat tool, but their rate of improvement is very quickly turning it into an amazing tool. A few days ago they released three new features that help make the system easier to use.

The new features include:
Map drag-n-drop: Reposition map markers easily, to get the exact location you want.
Precision video selection: Video start/stop times are now text-editable to the decimal place, to get the exact clip you want.
Longer narration: Now record up to 20 seconds per moment, to get the exact voiceover you want.
Here’s a great example of a Meograph that takes advantage of these new features:

You can try it for yourself at www.meograph.com.
Have you built anything noteworthy on their platform yet? If so, share it in the comments below.

More updates to Meograph: Geo optional, more browsers, new verticals

October 16, 2012

We’ve covered Meograph and their “four-dimension storytelling” a few times on GEB, as it’s an excellent product to help tell stories with a heavy dose of geolocation baked in.

The product has already come a long way in the short time since it was launched, and this week they’ve unveiled a few new great features:
Geo optional: At first glance, this isn’t a great thing. However, it actually makes the geolocation more relevant in the stories. A good example is from their Whitney Houston demo. It’s interesting to know where she was born, was discovered, etc, but not as interesting to know that the interview she taped with Diane Sawyer was filmed specifically in Atlanta.
Browser support: Meographs can be authored now in any browser (including mobile). Previously, Meographs could be played from any browser but only be created in Google Chrome.
Vertical-specific pages: They’ve created a special page for journalists (www.meograph.com/journalism) that lists benefits for news organizations. They’ll be adding journalism-specific content there, with other verticals coming soon.
To learn more you can check out the demos at www.meograph.com/demo or try creating one for yourself at meograph.com.

Meograph releases an enhanced authoring tool

September 7, 2012

I’ve been a big fan of Meograph since it was released earlier this year, as it’s a great tool to help show news stories using a heavy dose of geo reference. The big downside to it was that creating a “meograph” of your own was a fairly complicated thing to do. With their latest update, the authoring tool has become much easier to use, as you can see from the demo below:

They’ve also just added a new feature that showcases a fresh meograph each morning with highlights from the 2012 Presidential Election coverage. You can find this daily feature at www.meograph.com/election2012.
Here is an embedded version of yesterday’s update, which makes great use of photos, videos, audio, all with geo reference behind the content.

Meograph is shaping up to be a very powerful tool, especially with these new authoring tools and the continued refinements to the service. It’ll be interesting to see if adoption of the tool continues to grow in future months. Try it for yourself at meograph.com.

Meograph opens to all users

July 23, 2012

We first told you about the excellent Meograph tool back in May when they opened for limited beta testing. It is a tool for creating “four dimensional story-telling” with remarkable potential, and it’s been steadily improving since then. Think of it as multi-media visualizations on top of Google Earth.

Today, they’ve added a few more features and opened the door for everyone to join. The new features include:
• Full authoring capabilities: Easily create your own meograph, by simply providing facts, links, and media.
• Widely sharable: Embed your meograph on other sites, plus easily share on social networks.
• Earth/Maps toggle: Switch between mapping platforms for better performance on different devices.
• Publish on/off: Keep your work private while in progress before sharing it with your friends.
It’s a very well-produced tool, and I expect it’ll find great use as a storytelling tool. Go try it for yourself at meograph.com and leave a comment sharing your best meographs for all of us to see.