Marshall Kirkpatrick compares four geomapping services, quoting ClustrMaps (featured here before), Frappr (whom I have found a bit too US centric to be interesting to me -- if you don't have a US zip code, it has at least been a great hassle tagging their maps in the past), GVisit and Geo-Loc.
I have been in touch with first ClustrMaps and then GVisit myself, the latter actually on a tip from the ClustrMaps people, after suggesting some future improvements I would like to see in their services, for applications I would like to build atop their service. My wants were about exposing a geofeed, if you will, as JSON encoded data that would be available to a javascript web page application, getting access to data about the geographic location of recent visitors, for, for instance, generating interesting live or semi-live visuals of my own with Google Maps (or other web mapping services). They liked the idea, but were a bit busy at the moment with other things needing their attention, which is understandable. They seem to care deeply about their service, which is of course a good and healthy sign.
I mailed GVisit a (rather detailed) suggestion on how to make a JSON feed of their data, and quite promptly received an answer asking if I would want to write the code myself. The code was almost already there anyway, and I got a peek of the RSS feed generator to base it on, and it was live within the day. Which was nice. :-)
So, as of about yesterday, GVisit sports not only RSS feeds for recent visitor locations, but also JSON feeds, with which you can do any number of interesting things. They do not hand you a complete kit with astounding visuals ready to paste to your site, but, for the javascript savvy, something even better, in allowing you to do your own limitlessly cool hacks based on the same kind of data that renders our beautiful ClustrMaps images, or Geo-Loc flash widgets, or Frappr whatever-theirs-are.
Stay tuned for more info on what you can do in a web page with a JSON geofeed.
hi!
ReplyDeletecame here from blogger forums.. I was lookin for something like a clustermap to add to my blog.. found it here.. thanks!
Currently I am using stats software from http://www.ip2map.com. I prefer to use it as no limitation of usage.
ReplyDeleteI understood the first sentence, but the second one makes no sense to me. GVisit can be used for any purposes, as far as I know, and it's probably even less limited, on technical grounds, since you need not even involve GVisit for presentational purposes; it can be done right on your own web page, the way my blog banner does, for instance.
ReplyDeleteOf course it would be great if ip2map could match or even beat that feature set, though.
I have searched high and low, and I can not find the script required to take the json feed from gvisit and turn it into landmarks (as they do on the gvisit page).
ReplyDeleteCould you please point me in the right direction...
Cheers
http://www.aiiansw.org.au/access/about.shtml
It probably doesn't exist yet. My blog index page might be the only page yet to use the GVisit JSONP feed, and the article about how to do it of your own I have been planning on writing is not yet more than in the planning stage, I'm afraid. But knowing that somebody eagerly awaits one does help put me up to the task.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I should do just that, for starters, and put off the second article about a more ambitious take for a follow-up article or a few.
While not quite what you are asking for, I posted another example full page application, which might be easier to pick up than the code running in my blog template, which is somethat more bloated with other unrelated bits.
ReplyDeletePlease help guys. I am using iWeb and cannot get the code to be updated or read for either Clustrmaps or gVisit. Is there anything I need to do? I've been searching everywhere and am hoping someone will be able to help me.
ReplyDeleteThanks