Map Scripting

Even if you aren’t a history buff, you have to appreciate the mapping project by my fellow Programmable Web blogger Andres Ferrate. It chronicles the four voyages of Henry Hudson, most notably the one 400 years ago that took him to the east coast of the United States.

Andres started with the Google Maps API, then layered on historical maps and points of interest. There’s even the option to see the routes Hudson took on each voyage, including the one where he discovered the Hudson River and Hudson Bay. Yep, he’s that Hudson.

This may be a glimpse into what will replace the textbook, at least for primary school education. Explore the Hudson maps and tell me what you think.

Last week I was delighted to give an Ignite talk at the geo conference Where 2.0 about open mapping. There are a number of ways to interpret what that means, but I chose to focus on the APIs themselves. Getting a new developer to join the geo community right now means that the developer needs to choose an API to learn.

I’ve never been a fan of being monogamous with technology. One tool might be great for a particular project, but something else might be better for another project. With mapping APIs Mapstraction fixes this issue, but shouldn’t providers get together and standardize on their own? Watch my presentation (embedded below) to hear more about my thoughts on this topic.

I’m totally stoked to have finished the first draft of a really big chapter for the book. Mashup with Data APIs will show at least three example mashups that I think will help beginners learn how to incorporate outside data and create interactive maps.

1. My Weather mashup shows the current conditions across the U.S. and provides the forecast when you click an icon.
2. My Earthquake Mashup shows the earthquakes in the world over the last week, with marker size increasing with the quake’s intensity.
3. My Upcoming mashup shows concerts happening in the next week by location, with filtering by ticket price.

If you’re new to mapping, get a feel for how it works by viewing source. On the other hand, if you’re a JavaScript expert, tell me what you would have done differently. In either case, I’d love to hear feedback!

Mashups with third party APIs are still fun and useful to me, but it’s when people use their own data that things get really interesting. That’s the case with 3rdWhale and its gaggle of green search options.

The website takes an address, city, or postal code and returns green businesses in a category you select. You can then find out more information about what makes the business green, such as selling local and organic products.

There’s also an iPhone app, which is how I was introduced to the company. The app uses the phone’s location to search for nearby businesses by category and sub-category. My favorite part of the iPhone version is that I can choose the distance based on whether it’s walkable, bike-able, or driveable.

Any web-enabled phone can get in on the game, but it’s not exactly pretty (standard WAP, right?).

The site’s editor, Emily Jubenvill–the “greenest person in Canada”–says that they’re working hard to collect more data. They support 30 cities now. If yours is one of them, check out 3rdWhale. Not only will you find green businesses, but you will also see a great example where the proprietary data takes center stage, with maps and location providing context. That’s as it should be.

I can’t read any of the labels or other information that shows up when I click this map’s markers. But it sure looks great and appears not to use a mapping API at all. It’s a homegrown (with the help of jQuery) “slippy map” of Moscow neighborhoods.

The same could be achieved using Mapstraction or Google Maps, but the tiles would need to be resized to the standard 256×256. Currently they’re 250×361. Maybe that makes sense in metric.

Via Amber Case, whose Flickr set shows the site in the summer.

NPR’s David Greene is in the midst of a 100 day road trip, covering the U.S. economic crisis. He has talked to a restaurateur in Michigan, scoreboard-maker in Ohio and young Georgians about to enter a workforce with questionable options, among many others. So, he’s creating a lot of content along the way. That sort of road trip was just begging for a map component and now it has one.

The feature uses an embedded My Map (above), Google’s map mashup tool. Greene periodically plots his route and marks his current location. As he files reports for NPR or takes photos, he adds special markers with links to the content.

The map has a few rough edges, but overall I’m impressed. I never gave My Maps much consideration because so often I populate maps with dynamic content from a database. For a non-programmer sharing a trip, it gets their map to its destination with a lot less overhead than it would take to custom code.

I’d love to see every roadtripper chronicle their journey in a similar way. I’m looking at you, TumbleWagon.

There’s a great new way to learn to use Google’s APIs, including maps, with the Ajax Playground. See, edit and run the code from nearly 50 mapping examples.

The interface is great for trying stuff out. You won’t need to swap windows or dig through unrelated code to figure out what’s important. If you’re logged in to a Google account, you can even save your changes or export your code for use in a real project.