Concharto Blog

New Tag Clouds

Wikipedia defines tag cloud as “…a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, used typically to describe the content of web sites.

Concharto now displays a “tag cloud” of recently added content. When you create an event, you can tag it with key phrases.

The cloud above shows that there are more events tagged with 2008 greek riots than those tagged with pakistan terror attacks and there a few less tagged with family of barak obama. If you click on any of these tags, you will get a listing of all events that were tagged as such.

In addition you can now see an index of all tags in Concharto, grouped by the century in which the event took place, starting with the most recent century.

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Saddam Hussein’s Capture and Execution

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Here are the basic details of Saddam Hussein’s time as a prisoner after the occupation of Iraq by American forces. On this day two years ago he was executed.

As time goes by we hope that we can create a more extensive timeline of the Iraqi dictator’s life and times, so we can provide a clearer picture as to how he became the tyrant he was.

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The 2008 Greek Riots

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Information has been sketchy, but we’ve been trying to build up a database on what’s going down in Greece. Currently several universities are occupied by disgruntled students (this happens a lot in Greece, for whatever reason), and the police and protesters are currently clashing in numerous cities around the country.

Most of you know that this attack started because a policeman shot a 15 year old in the reputed anarchist district of Athens. For those who want further details, check the Wikipedia article which continues to evolve (although a lot of the details remain pretty sketchy). Concharto will be adding further events to this map when we get official word on them.

I’ll be adding a Google Map link which will have less authoritative sources but more photos and videos in a bit.

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Pakistan Under Siege

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This year has been sobering for the people of Pakistan, as one terror attack after another plagues the cities and the villages. Here is a brief rundown of the 2008 Pakistan attacks that have been reported on Wikipedia from November and early December. And the list keeps on going, all the way back to 2002. Over 270 terrorist attacks have been reported in the past six years, and with chaos growing in the unstable country, it isn’t looking any better for the future.

If you’d like to contribute to this growing map, please add events with the tag “pakistan terror attacks” on Concharto and it should appear on the map above. If you’d like to help out orphaned children in Pakistan who are now being caught up in the violence, you can go here and donate to SOS Children’s Village.

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Historical Spotlight: Democratic & Republican Convention Locations

As the Democratic and Republican National Conventions kick off this week and next, I thought it’d be fun to take a look and see where each convention took place. I’ve managed to compile a partial list of every major US political convention dating back to 1972.

Democratic Convention venues

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Republican Convention venues

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You’ll see that Madison Square Garden is the most popular spot for either party; the Democratic Party hosted their convention three times in the famous arena (1976, 1980, and 1992) during the modern era, and the Republicans made their first visit there last year in 2004.

This is far from a complete list though! If you want to help fill out the list, you can use these Wikipedia lists of Democratic and Republican National Conventions to help compile more of these locations onto Concharto!

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Documenting the Summer Olympics

Hi, Avinash here, one of the admins at Concharto and creator of The Play. I’ll be posting some sample ways you can add to Concharto and document specific events.

As the Beijing Olympics wind down and become part of history, it feels like a perfect time to discover where these places are located. One thing that always interests me when I visit Olympic sites is which particular buildings hosted which events. As a sample, I’ve posted where the 2004 Summer Olympics events were located in Athens, Greece.

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This first map contains most of the stadiums and arenas for all the Olympic events in Greece; notice that the shot put was held in Olympia in Elis. For a closer look at the events in the Athens area, the bottom map provides a more detailed description.

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Of course this is not a complete picture of those Summer Games–other possibilities for new users to edit; this includes placing in the marathon route (which retraced the classic route from Marathon to Athens), the Olympic torch route, and detailing specific events within each sport. And we haven’t even gotten started with Beijing 2008!

Anyone want to help out? Register with Concharto and get started!

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New line and shape editing features

Concharto now allows you to easily add and delete points from any place on a line or shape.

* To add a point, simply drag one of the “shadow” squares that you see in between the solid white squares.

* To delete a point, simply click on it.

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New: Export to Google Earth, Terrain Map

A few new features went live this weekend:

1. Export to Google Earth. In the search results there is a new kml link on the upper left. If you have a virtual globe browser like Google Earth or MS Virtual Earth, you can now use this link to import your search results into it. Click on this link:

And if you have installed Google Earth or similar, it will load the search results right into Google Earth like this:

2. New Terrain Map Type. Concharto now has a new map type called Terrain. To see it, click on the “Ter” button on the upper left of the screen.

This map style is great for historic events because it minimizes modern geographic features such as roads and metropolitan areas and stresses terrain features such as elevation and climate.

3. New Icons Concharto finally has its own map icons . An icon has been added to the info window to help you to associate lines and shapes (which don’t have labels) to the left hand time-line pane.

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Improvements to Search Results Page

A few improvements to the search results page have gone live this week.

You can now hide the timeline sidebar to show more of the map. Just click “hide sidebar” near the upper left of the page. To show the side bar again, click “show”.

The timeline is now hidden, so how can you follow the events on the map in sequential order? The info balloons now have a next/previous that lets you do that.

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Concharto is not Historical Cartography

I periodically get comments like this one from a Wikipedian whom I respect, “… how would one accommodate changes in geography and man-made features as you go back in time?”

The frivolous answer is “we don’t do that.” Accommodating changes in geography, including cityscapes, roads and terrain, is the domain of Historical Cartography, an art form that requires a great deal of skill, talent and access to archival maps. I know people who are expert practitioners in historical cartography - Concharto can’t do what they do.

But this is not a problem because Concharto is about placing past events relative to each other and to today’s geography. For instance, the Battle of Thermopylae was fought along a track that was right over the water. Today, that area is several miles from Greek coastline. Concharto just shows its location on today’s map.

But this doesn’t mean we Concharto editors can’t use historical cartography. A great example is the timeline of the New York Draft Riots of the American Civil War.

Many of the events mentioned in the textual references call out places like “The Colored Orphanage on 5th Avenue.” That property hasn’t existed for years, but you can find its location using a map from David Rumsey Historical Maps (above). That city block looks like this today:

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