JeffreyBarke.net

Kick-Ass Mash-Ups with Punk Rock APIs

Tired of re-inventing the wheel? Wish there was a single grand unified API layer over everything? In this panel we'll gather data from a dozen different popular sites and services and present it all under a single API, using nothing but stone knives, bear skins, free online tools and client-side JavaScript.

• Kent Brewster, Web Guy, Yahoo!

Please note: These notes were typed and published live. I'll clean them up at some point in the future. Audio forthcoming.

About Kent:
* No formal education
About Kent and Yahoo!
* Listed as a Yahoo! employee, but only true for five more days.
About the tech
* Insecure
* Unauthorized
* Not supported by anyone
* Generally a bad, scary idea

If what you do is wrong, they can turn around and feed you bad things (steal cookies, etc).

http://kentbrewster.com/badges/

What he’s going to show us relies on the script tag hack. Douglas Crockford quote: “The script tag hack is not secure and should be avoided.” Douglas Crockford wrote this in response to Kent Brewster.
Read the rest of this entry »

From Directions Magazine, via Donna:

Jotle is a new Google mashup that combines Google Maps with Flickr and YouTube. According to a posting at the Directions Magazine's Web Map Gallery by Mikhail Novikov:

Google Maps + Wikimapia + Placeopedia + Flickr + YouTube = Jotle! Jotle is a new Flickr photo and YouTube video explorer that takes Google Maps and mashes it up with Wikimapia and Placeopedia placemarks.

Jotle lets you zoom into various parts of the world and see map points for Wikimapia and Placeopedia. Jotle then uses the tags for these locations to pull in photos from Flickr and videos from YouTube. Though it's definitely not the first Flickr + YouTube Google Maps mashup it is the first that uses this clever location-plotting as a way to suggest photos and videos for the areas of the map you're looking at. It's also a great compliment to the immense value both Wikimapia and Placeopedia offer in the area of travel and tourism. Now in addition to researching areas you are about to visit using Wikimapia and Placeopedia you can also use Jotle to get a visual feel for the immediate area.

Hmm… well, I'm not sure if it's my slow internet connection or what, but don't believe the hype. While the concept of Jotle is sound, the performance leaves much to be desired. The app was very unresponsive and I had a hard time figuring out what did what (or if anything did anything at all!).

…

Update: After spending a bit more time playing around, I feel I may have been a bit too hard on Jotle. It is in beta, after all, and my connection is terribly slow. Still, there's something about the UI that I feel is seriously lacking.

Three posts bundled as one about various things Google Maps API, including: an API plugin for Dreamweaver (no JavaScript required!), one-minute mashups by Google and the datum and projection used by Google.

WebAssist Dreamweaver tools for Google

Posted by Brandon Badger, Product Manager, Google Maps API:

We want to highlight a new tool that helps make the Google Maps API accessible to even more web developers. We're for everyone becoming a JavaScript expert, but sometimes it's nice to lean on a tool to get development done quickly. WebAssist has created a free plugin for Adobe Dreamweaver that walks you through a simple wizard to add a Google Maps API powered map to your webpage. The properties of the map can even be edited via Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG editor.

WebAssist Dreamweaver Tools For Google (free)

From the Google Maps API Blog

Map search wizard

The Google AJAX Search API team has put together a map search wizard to help you put a searchable map on your web page in three easy steps:

1. Customize it—Use the wizard to define the map's width, height, zoom level, title, location, etc.
2. Provide your site's URL—This is used by the wizard to create your free Maps API and AJAX Search API keys to associate with your web site.
3. Hit the magic button—Click on the "Generate Code" button and the wizard will create the customized JavaScript for your map. Just paste this code into your web page, and voilà, your users will have the power of Google Maps at their fingertips.

From the Google Maps API Blog

Google Maps projection

According to Google (official), they use a Mercator projection for their maps (both street and satellite). Charlie Savage provides quite a bit more detail in a blog post, though (unofficial, but very informative):

From last time, we know that a geodetic coordinate system consists of a datum, a projection, an origin, a unit system, two axes and perhaps an origin offset. Without further ado, this is what Google is doing:

• Datum—WGS84 (I'm assuming this, I've never seen verification of it)
• Projection—Mercator
• Unit system—pixels (believe it or not)
• Axes—standard east, non-standard south
• Origin—near the north pole on the international date line

From cfis

While doing a printable map for Conflux, I received a request to number the points and create a key. While this isn't a difficult task, it does require a set of numbered icons. I was in a hurry and didn't want to create my own: enter Brennan's Blog.

Brennan created several icons in red, green and blue, which are numbered 1 to 25 each. He also included an empty one as well as the Photoshop master. Visit his post to download the .zip. Thanks, Brennan!