The Idea
The idea for this site came to me on a trip to Vancouver BC in Septemember 2005. I hadn't worked in over 7 months
and as such the process of being on vacation and in a new place felt very familiar to me. My usual routine was to settle
in to my surroundings and begin searching Google for cool places to skate while in town. I'd thrash back and forth using
the search results and various mapping sites trying to find the best approximation of where the parks were; this was
usually made worse by the cryptic directions given in the search results.
Since I had recently re-installed Google Earth on my laptop, I realized it was a much better tool to keep track of the
parks I found and wanted to visit. Soon I was marking all the places I had been and putting details about each one. Almost
immediately I could see this would be a great tool to share with others as it made the process a lot easier.
Beginnings
Over Thanksgiving weekend I decided to buy a domain and focus some energy into the idea. Since then the site has progressed
in stages often with large breaks between coding binges. Some of the bigger challenges involve taming the side projects that
tend to evolve as new features are added (ie adding flickr, became creating a new javascript, ajax based flickr viewer).
Obviously this site is a work in progress, but the core functionality is in place and hopefully will prove useful to anyone
who may visit.
Site Feature Summary
Add Locations
Enables adding new locations to the map databaseinstructions
When enabled, any point on the map can be clicked and new entries made for that location
actions
Displays a dialog to capture information
data
Title, location type, lat and lng stored for each entry via a GMap InfoWindow
Faded Tiles/'SkateAtlas' map type
Improves marker recognitionactions
After page load, iterate images, identify map/satellite images, fade
image using javascript/CSS filter
more
I can't help but think this was one of my more creative and successful hacks. I was inspired by the work done
on the onnyturf.com subway maps. The simple backgrounds brought out the detailed subway drawings
in a way that caught my eye. I hoped to achieve that same clarity for my locations markers without
creating custom map tiles and a bit of tinkering turned the standard map into an interesting variation of the original.
credits
Originally helped along by fading logic from Keenan Tims
Insperation: http://www.onnyturf.com/subwaymap.php
-- amazing
Locate via Place
Locates a place by name on the mapmore
Displays named locations in the USA matching the given value and further allows you to quickly center and zoom to that location
technology
Ajax, Asp.net webservices, sql
actions
Lookup named place and display matches. From matches -> Center and zoom
credits
Data Supplied by the U.S. Populated Places File
U.S. GNIS
Locate via Address
Locates an address on the map given a standard postal addressactions
Geocode, center and zoom
technology
Ajax, Asp.net webservices
credits
Data supplied by the free WSDL web service
http://geocoder.us/
Locate via Lat/Lng
Locates a place on the map given the user supplied Lat/Lng valuesactions
Center and zoom
more
Decimal Input/Standard Input?
Currently only supports input in decimal format
Lat/Lng Paste & Decifer
Attempts to decode lat/lng values copied form other sourcesmore
Copy coordinates from another website to the clipboard, paste them into this textbox and try the "Attempt to Decifer" function. If it works, it prevents you from having to hand extract Lat/Lng values.
Blogger Atom XSLT
XSLT to convert ATOM feed to HTMLmore
It wouldn't have taken long to roll my own XSLT file, but given the number of outstanding tasks, I choose to
go with an existing file for now and mod it to fit.
credits
Thanks again to google for helping me find it and Rich Manalang for making a usuable version readily available.