June 30, 2005

Web Technology

Google Maps API and Greasemap

The Where 2.0 conference I've just been at was quite fun, and inspirational. Among other announcements, Google introduced their new Google Maps APIs. This, plus all the "mashups" that showed hacked versions of Google Maps used in conjunction with other sites, and Tim O'Reilly speaking about "Web 2.0" involving users using open web technologies to "remix" other sites, inspired me to create Greasemap.

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Greasemap is a Greasemonkey-based plugin for Firefox that automatically adds maps to the top of pages containing either geotags (GeoURL or other standards), or regex-recognizable addresses. It works by parsing each page you visit, from Javascript, looking for addresses or other patterns that correspond to locations. If it finds any, it embeds in the page a new toplevel IFRAME at the top, which loads content from www.vinq.com after sending the addresses. This "greasemap.html" web service on Vinq.com attempts to geocode the addresses, then combines them with any lat+long coordinates provided in the page, and embeds one or two Google Maps using the Vinq.com Google Maps API Key (since the iframe comes from Vinq).

I did this more as a proof of concept than anything, though I have already found it useful on sites such as switchboard.com, whitepages.com, and www.apple.com/retail . If a page includes just one address, currently Greasemap shows 2 maps -- a width-limited one at left that is more zoomed out, to show context, and a wider zoomed in one at right.

The Greasemap page lists some of the improvements I plan to make to it, but I also welcome your feedback and suggestions at info@vinq.com

Posted by mark at 09:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 20, 2005

Hobbies

Printed Photo Album with Apple Pages

My father-in-law has impressed our whole family recently with beautifully printed photo album pages he produces on his home color printer. These include attractive captions, background colors + patterns, frames around each photo, and often large page captions or titles. He's producing them on a PC; I'll find out what he's using and add that as an update to this article.

I'm a longtime Mac user, and I find Apple iPhoto to be great for just about everything else about photo management, but for printing these multi-picture-per-page albums, it doesn't really offer a solution. They have a great system for printing books, but require you to pay Apple for the binding and printing.

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Continue reading "Printed Photo Album with Apple Pages"

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June 13, 2005

Hobbies

Store Wars

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away... I had to blog about this, though I know it's already spread far and wide on the Internet at this point. Store Wars is a hilarious send up of Star Wars, but with the theme of organic vegetables vs. the "empire" of irradiated, chemically enhanced, and factory-processed foods. A great movie with a great message; what more could we want for free? View Store Wars

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