I can only imagine the irony of someone pulling out their iPhone to see if they are safe in a certain neighborhood using their new Am I Safe app, and then being mugged while conspicuously displaying their several hundred-dollar piece of electronic equipment on the street.
Marketing fear is, I guess, a brilliant thing to do if you want to make money. But this “app” is of course totally useless in any real sense, except perhaps for the sake of novelty. And I guess that is what the real point of having an iPhone is, no? The only thing the maps seem to show is that the denser the population of a neighborhood, the more crime. The maps, however, are really beautiful. And this simple “Am I safe in…” page is… beautiful in a different way. So far there is no pixelated crime map of Los Angeles, but the unequivocal answer is…
Christoph Niemann’s recent Abstract City post at the NYTimes.com displays an entirely different system of mapping. Using the aesthetic of Google Maps, he has created funny little cartoons about a variety of mostly banal subjects. Some are topical, others are just… silly. My favorite is seen here. Apparently the one about Casablanca is very funny, if you’ve seen the movie, but of course I haven’t so I have no comment (though when it was explained to me I could see how it would be particularly funny).
