Would love to hear from people how they are using Mapanui, either as a bookmarklet or integrated into a site! Am thinking of a couple of improvements, but you’ll need to let me know anything else I could improve.
Thanks!
Archive for the ‘Mapanui’ Category
Your feedback
Sunday, July 12th, 2009Updated Mapanui site
Saturday, March 21st, 2009I’ve created a new homepage for Mapanui (yes it’s very green), though it remains a work in progress. The site itself always has been an after-thought, put together quickly for the WhereIs contest, beginning of last year. So I really should take time to think about what I want to put onto this site, and how to structure it. But for now, again, I’ve put a band-aid on top of it, on the homepage. There’s so much more I’d like to do, but hey, there’s only 24h in a day, right? And at one point in time, I’d also like to add a screencast explaining the functionality, but again, takes time getting that up and running. Aaah…
My published email to a UK magazine
Saturday, March 14th, 2009
Me pimpin’ microformats and Mapanui in a published readers’ letter in the current April edition of UK’s .net magazine (aka Practical Web Design). Let’s see if they do a microformats article soon (and include Mapanui…).
On a side note, this edition also includes an interview with Christian Heilmann (of Yahoo), who’ll do a workshop on Pragmatic, accessible JavaScript in a web services world at the WebDirections Roadshow in Melbourne and Sydney. Get your current copy for (a whopping) $25 at any good magazine store.
Gmail adds location
Thursday, February 12th, 2009Google is rolling out an option in Gmail to add your location to your e-mail signature. It’s IP based so it’s not all too exact, but if you install Google Gears it can get the Wifi access point name and get a better fix. This comes right after they introduce Latitude. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Next we may see an option which automatically updates your location on Latitude, every time you send an email from Gmail.
If you’ve got Gears installed, or this Firefox geolocation extension or the Mozilla Geode extension (or Firefox 3.1), you could try out the beta Mapanui version, where I’ve been playing with the geolocation API (though nothing fancy just yet).
Interview with Fire Eagle’s Tom Coates
Saturday, February 7th, 2009Interview Yahoo! Geo Technologies blog has an interview with their own Tom Coates from Fire Eagle:
“Pretty much every site on the internet would be improved if it was able to respond to where a user was in some way.”
Great insight into where they are coming from, and where they are going with Fire Eagle.
Start integrating geolocation into your own projects. Use microformats to geo-enable your own websites, and interact with your visitors. It’s easy: use Mapanui to create your own virtual geo-enabled address card. Soon geo/location-aware search will become more important and microformats help people find your site. Additionally, add an ICBM meta tag at the top of your web page, and register at GeoURL.
Privacy notice
Sunday, January 18th, 2009I have added a privacy notice on the bookmarklet page. It reads:
“Because of the hosted nature of this bookmarklet (hosted on the Mapanui.com server), please be advised that Mapanui is able to see where it is being used, as it is called from the referring site (the site with the address you want to map). We are not able to identify you, nor do we use this referral information at all. But if you feel uncomfortable with this, then please don’t use the Mapanui bookmarklet.”
I felt that I should let users know before they use it. This is the same for any bookmarklet, be it Microsoft Oomph, or Evernote or whatever.
I also added a UserVoice feedback link and a ShareThis link.
Show your cards
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009Inspired by Meitar Moscovitz article “A Little-known Way to Replace Some Scripts with CSS Counters” over at SitePoint, I’ve added a little bit of CSS to make the hCard microformat pop out of the page, while counting all occurrences and adding it to the bottom of the page, no JavaScript involved.
Next I’d like to add interactivity to the hCard, so that when you click it, it shows up on the Mapanui pane, in stead of clicking on the link(s) at the bottom of the pane. Some next version…
Twitter following vs followers
Monday, January 12th, 2009Interesting tidbit. I’ve been on Twitter as @mapanui for a while now, only having 6 followers of which 4 were, euh, me… So nothing much happened, as you can expect. Then yesterday I decided to go to some people’s following lists, see who would be interesting, and started following them, again on @mapanui, just to spread some more Mapanui love (well, it’s just some basic marketing actually:).
Now, the interesting fact is, I get more people following me, who I wasn’t following myself. Lots of “entrepreneurial” types it seems, people who are already following lots of others, but not necessarily the people I was targeting. I was rather looking for users, regular folk, like you and me.
Ignite Sydney – January 22
Sunday, January 11th, 2009Remember Ignite Spatial? Coming up, Ignite Sydney:
“If you’re sick of Death By Powerpoint, then come along to Ignite Sydney, where you’re guaranteed a fun night of entertaining and educational presentations.”
Speakers and subjects include:
- Matt Moore : Words at work – what links Flickr, mind maps, and a vengeful God?
- Jason Yip : Lean programming (the fridge vs the radiator)
- Kieran Ots : A year of failed projects (and what I learned from them)
- Richard Lane : Mapping the sky – Is bigger always better?
- Pamela Fox : HTML5 vs Flex for Rich Internet Applications
- Jeremy LeBard : Australians are a nation of readers. Why do we need Amazon?
- Geoff Bowers: Setting Fire To Your Community. A tale of Japanese mummies, karmic balance and benevolent dictators
- Chloe Mason : Why Sydney needs active travel
- Meitar Moscovitz : How technology influences sexual awareness (and vice versa)
- Mark Pollard : 7 things you can learn from hip-hop
See you there!?
Mapanui v1.2
Sunday, January 11th, 2009Finally put beta changes live:
- horizontal resize, love this one;
- conditional zoom, when you search for a street address, map will be zoomed in closer, then when looking for a place name (nice tip I got at BarCamp preso, thanks for that);
- Google Local search, search for local business
Hope you enjoy!