Testing mailto posting to blog

 

Hello, I just setup the mailto-posting option for the blog and I wanted to test it out. If all goes well I can now simply send an email from anywhere directly to the blog.. no attachments etc.. but it's still quite useful. Note: the blog also supports posting via MMS from a mobile.

 

Cheers

Glenn

My Firefox upgrade

I finally decided to start messing around with firefox (about time eh?) The main reason was that I seem to keep coming accross cool apps that are developed for the browser so I caved and loaded yet another browser... it's likely a good idea anyway so I can test all our websites using the various form factors. Right away I note some very cool features... for example, the installation and migration from IE was totally painless. I've already added some custom scripts like the "send text to mobile" app which lets firefox users highlight text from a webpage and send to a mobile cleint (US only though). I'm also looking into some flickr and mappr apps for firefox as well which should enable me to do some cool things. For more info see http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/central.html

ESRI User Conference Video clip

This year will make the 7th consecutive year that I've attended and covered the ESRI User conference in San Diego, CA. For fun, I put together a short (5 MB) video clip of some images captured at last years' event. The video can be accessed in our GISuser ESRI UC homepage section where we'll be publishing news, exhibitor profiles, feature content, and images from the show. See http://www.gisuser.com/content/category/1/247/2/ to access the video.

Hurricane Resources and Map service

With hurricane season coming so early this year, I felt it was timely to create this spotlight.
Looking for a Specific Storm Track? Curious Where Hugo, Fran, or Ivan Made Landfall? Then this application from NOAA is what you need. Easily search for tropical cyclone tracks from Atlantic and Pacific data by entering a ZIP Code, latitude and longitude coordinates, city or state, or geographic region and then view the selected tracks on a map. Want to build your own webmap service? Access and download the historical hurricane data for yourself!
The hurricane map viewer is very simple and useful. Wnat to see a track? Simply click the Find button and select a storm by name and year. The track will be displayed on the map. Want to develop your own application? This can be done too by downloading the historical hurricane data. You can find it HERE (SHP format) or locate the link in the GISuser / Downloads / Data section.
Other useful hurricane related weblinks:
http://hurricane.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/history.shtml
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
http://www.osei.noaa.gov/
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/hgx/projects/allison01.htm
Atlantic Basin table of storm names and numbers (PDF)
Info about Hurricane Floyd, 1999
Hurricane Evacuation zone maps
Hurricane prepardeness
For detailed and upto the minute reports see the National Hurricane Center

PS: to the gas gouging independant retailers in NW Florida.. you guys suck!

USGS Maps the Spread of West Nile During 2005 Season

A clever python programmer in the UK has managed to develop a simple way of serving Google maps to his Symbian smartphone
The demo app reads the current latitude / longitude position from a Bluetooth GPS device and converts the coordinates into an x,y map tile reference for Google Maps. After connecting to Google Maps over GPRS or 3G and retrieving the tile, it displays it on the screen. View details HERE
The discussion also refers to another source with information about a Google Maps GPS application for the Nokia - See http://jgwebber.blogspot.com/2005/02/mapping-google.html

Google send to phone extension

Anyway, I'm constantly amazed by the things developers are cracking into with the APIs that are available. Now Google has a send to phone extension (for firefox). It's an extension that enables you to send short text messages of web page content to your mobile phone. How cool is that?

Just wait until some google map hacker taps into this and develops an app that will send driving directions to a mobile! Imagine, you get lost so you call home and get your wife to tap google for directions and the results are sent to you via SMS... nice!

http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/extensions/sendtophone/

Also, if you've been following our Google maphack section you'll be pleased to know that I've been constantly adding developer tools and links to new maphacks - see the feature at http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/5807/28/

Where 2.0 O'reilly notes Hackers are teaching the industry

From Tim O'reilly... "Google maps with Craigslist is the first true Web 2.0 application, neither of the sites was involved…a developer put it together," he said. "Hackers are teaching the industry what to do."

O'reilly also noted that all the killer apps are now using open source

See the blog here - http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/index.php?p=1565

Also regarding google maps... this discussion gets real interesting. Participants in the discussion are Yahoo!'s Jeffrey McManus and ChicagoCrime.org's Adrian Holovaty (Google map hacker) - Why the Yahoo! Maps API is Better Than Brand X Maps API - http://mcmanus.typepad.com/grind/2005/06/why_the_yahoo_m.html

PhotoBlog images from London

For example, check out Flick and search on London - http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/london/. You'll find some images taken this AM in London that show exactly the kind of damage that has resulted from the latest cowardly act of terrorism.

More images can be accessed from photoblogs.org

Note: I also maintain a blog at flickr - See http://www.flickr.com/photos/gisuser/

Google Earth Hacks & useful developer docs

A talk-back thread from an O'reilly weblog I also maintain pointed me to a new website for google map hackers - you'll find it at http://www.googleearthhacks.com/
The site hasn't got much "meat" at the moment and it appears to be focusing on simply reposting image captures of cool places discovered using Google Earth.. a cool idea I guess, although not really a "hack" nor rocket science.. actually, if I'm not mistaken I believe that as part of the license agreement with Google Earth, screen grabs are actually a big no no and not allowed.
On the flip side, the website did point me to an interesting developer document now available from keyhole - the Google Earth KML Document - http://www.keyhole.com/kml/kml_tut.html - The document reveals everything a developer (or map hack) needs in order to create and share information with a Google Earth client.

First test using iUpload

I ran accross an interesting press item today about this new functionality from iUpload. It integrates common weblogging apps with Google maps. I'm actually posting to my "blogger" weblog here and using the iUploaded app to create the message. For details see the PR "iUpload's Blogging Solution First to Integrate With Google Maps"