Andrew Bidochko

I’ve found a very interesting post about mashups and Google Platform.

The online mapping arena is changing so quickly, and I obviously am not able to cover the details of all these changes. Nonetheless, it’s helpful to speculate on what I believe to be the long-term trends in this area as a way of priming yourself for future changes.

• I think that you’ll see a migration of many features found in typical full-fledged GIS system — e.g., shading of layers — into programmable web applications. (e.g., Pushpin Multi-layer map server)
• Not surprisingly, we’ll see the platform players (such as Google Maps) incorporate functionality started off as extensions to the platform into the platform itself. For example, sites such as mapbuilder.net provided a user interface for building Google (or Yahoo!) map before Google made it easier to build a Google Map via its “My Maps” functionality. Google’s My Maps doesn’t exactly duplicate mapbuilder.net but it’s bound to win a major audience by virtue of its tight integration with Google Maps.

“Indiana State Fair Tractor Drive” map shows how easy is to add polyline to the code generated by MapBuilder.
Here’s the actual code to build polyline:

// Add polyline
var TractorDrive = new Array(
new GPoint(-86.17002010345459, 39.771504066537645),
new GPoint(-86.16152286529541, 39.771306157391855),
new GPoint(-86.16165161132812, 39.768601342041286),
new GPoint(-86.15890502929688, 39.76846939711062),
new GPoint(-86.15804672241211, 39.767842655236535),
new GPoint(-86.15718841552734, 39.768403424550456),
new GPoint(-86.1579179763794, 39.76903016131954),
new GPoint(-86.15757465362549, 39.77796878575054),
new GPoint(-86.1571455001831, 39.78944546454763),
new GPoint(-86.15731716156006, 39.794985245044494),
new GPoint(-86.15701675415039, 39.798249549632104),
new GPoint(-86.15650177001953, 39.80392049827307),
new GPoint(-86.15306854248047, 39.80603049931308),
new GPoint(-86.14954948425293, 39.80612940402307),
new GPoint(-86.14495754241943, 39.808601975532106),
new GPoint(-86.14375591278076, 39.80965691231115),
new GPoint(-86.14354133605957, 39.81028327336426),
new GPoint(-86.14371299743652, 39.81387649754178),
new GPoint(-86.14354133605957, 39.81433799896189),
new GPoint(-86.13933563232422, 39.81763434756231),
new GPoint(-86.13757610321045, 39.82037019683298),
new GPoint(-86.13495826721191, 39.82234785137201),
new GPoint(-86.13161087036133, 39.82531422646072),
new GPoint(-86.12950801849365, 39.82785202349348)
);
//Add Polyline Overlay
map.addOverlay(new GPolyline(TractorDrive));

Chris DiBona featured MapBuilder on Google Code page.
http://code.google.com (check top right side).
I’m so excited! Thanks Chris!

For those who has been upgraded FireFox to v.1.5!
There is a know problem for InfoWindow (popup) layout. Read through this thread on the Google Maps API group for a fix and related discussion. I will monitor this problem and see if it’s necessary to make some fixes in the source code generated by MapBuilder.

Over the time I’ve seen many maps created by MapBuilder. So I decided to share my favorite one (list will grow up).

Central Park Birding Locations
An interesting outdoor urban mashup showing the locations of various types of birds in Central Park. Info balloons show pictures of the birds as well as referencing the page numbers from the book titled: “Birds of Central Park”.

Musashi University Cycling Club
Nice map create by Japanese guys. A lot of pictures. I do not understand Japanese but map has the following tags:Miyako Island 東北 Yaeyama Islands kyushu Kanto Tohoku

The Many Travels of Dan
Map integrated with AudioBlog.com.

Jerez de la Frontera
Hotels, monuments and more… I would like to note icon customisation on this map.

More favorites coming soon…

It took more than month to get my interview published on eHub. Finally it is live.
Hope you will enjoy reading it!
Emily! Thanks for the post and keep up the good work.

———- About eHub ———
eHub is ranked in the Technorati Top 1000 blogs, is a member of the Web 2.0 Workgroup, and was recently cited in Forbes.com, and has been listed in Daypop’s Top 40, PubSub’s Top 100, Digg.com’s top links, and has been on del.icio.us popular with over 2100 bookmarks for over a month. eHub has also recently been mentioned by leading writers, bloggers, sites, and technologists including Seth Godin, Stowe Boyd in Corante, Metafilter, Waxy, Josh Porter, Barb Dybwad in the Social Software Weblog, Ed Sims, Mark Evans, Pete Cashmore, Planet Ajaxian, AJAX developer, and numerous others. Buzz about eHub: http://www.emilychang.com/go/ehub/about/

eHub Interviews is a project by Emily Chang and Max Kiesler of Ideacodes, a strategic web design consultancy in San Francisco,
California. We offer a full suite of services, including strategy, design, consulting, web applications development, blog tools, and
next generation web.

Recently JavaScript Injection method has been slightly updated to set map size dynamically using values specified on “Map Controls” page. It means that you can resize your map without any source code modification. Just update map size on “Map Controls” page!

JavaScript injection method has been updated with recent “Direction” features and new info window structure. It’s necessary to upgrade your existing html code with latest code generated by mapbuilder.net to get nice layout for your pop up windows.

Recently I’ve updated a css style for info window (popup window which appears once user clicks on the marker). That update was done to allow users change layout css styles of “direction” box. So right now info window has the following structure:

By default default window styles defined as the following:

#MapBuilderIW { width: 350px;}
#MapBuilderIWContent {height: 120px; overflow:auto;}
#MapBuilderIWCaption {font-weight: bold; font-size: 12pt; color: #369; border-bottom: 2px solid #369;}
#MapBuilderIWFooter {margin-top: 5px; font-size: 8pt; }
#MapBuilderIWFooterZoom {}
#MapBuilderIWDirections{ margin-bottom: 10px;}

In some cases users want to have small info window (with size of default google-map info window). To get that done you it’s necessary to remove all style references listed above from generated source code or just put the following:

#MapBuilderIW {width: 200px;}
#MapBuilderIWCaption {font-weight: bold;}

Recently new feature has been added to MapBuilder.net. Users are able to sent request for join development for any existing map. It’s so called “Shared Map Development”. Each request must be approved by owner. This new feature will allow users to build community around particular map.

Who can use this feature?
Bloggers, people who build community maps, etc.

How it works? Just search for map you are interested in, view the map (you’ll see something like this) and request permission to join the map using form on the “Tools” panel. Map owner will grant requested or some other access level for you. You’ll get email notification about once your request will be accepted.