Rendering, sharing and using our geolocation data
I’ve been thinking about ways to represent cities and countries on the global map when we have lots of desks at each location. I’d visualised opaque circles of differing sizes representing the differing numbers of desks at each location, and had started to think about how I’d generate the data for that. Seems I may not now have to if this Techcrunch article is anything to go by. Finder lets you store and share geo data and Maker will let you build interactive maps from the data that look like they’ll be what I need.
Another interesting link in the Techcrunch article is to Mapufacture, recently bought by the people behind Finder and Maker, which lets you build composite maps from your own, or other people’s data (via a feed). So I’m thinking we should make our office locations available via a feed, with a link for each office to booking forms on the site (or mobile version of it). I’m envisaging a mobile user with a mapping app, where they add their favourite feeds which they can use to discover things around them that are of specific interest to them. Flaming Desks could be part of that user’s landscape if the desks are made available via a feed.
Tags: geolocation, mapping
August 14th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
This is definitely a great idea - a GeoRSS feed of current desk availability. Then users could use Mapufacture’s FireEagle geolocation mechanism to pull from items nearby them.
Here is an example of parking availability that is updated every 15 minutes. Imagine instead it’s desk avail.
http://mapufacture.com/maps/1664
August 15th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Love it. I’d like to to be able to add the FlamingDesks GeoFeed to some of the maps I create for myself in Google Maps’ “My Maps” bit - will this be possible?
For example, if I’m going to, say, San Francisco, I might make myself a map of where some cool stuff I want to see is - but would be handy to see where I could plug in and Skype my Mum from.