Google Maps

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Jes
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by Jes »

Klazu wrote:Very cool feature, although only the dots map is being really useful when one has more notes. :wink:

Too bad that on the world map the dots are missplaced from correct location. Or maybe I missed the instructions on how to handle this?
If you use the Europe map, you can browse at the same time the world dots. At least in my case, when I use my sister's computer (mine doesnt' work very well :( )
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by lmviterbo »

Great!!!

Works fine and fast here (Win Vista 64-bit, on all these browsers: Chrome 3.0, IE 8.0, IE 8.0 64-bit, Firefox 3.5.4, Firefox 3.5.5, Opera 10.01, Opera 10.10, Flock 2.5.2)

Suggestion: I would love to be able to filter my Notes by entered country (v.g. notes entered in Portugal).
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Pole Doctor
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by Pole Doctor »

Now THIS is cool :D
I was using Ernie's Google Maps export function but I was missing the ability to zoom with the mouse wheel. Everything works smoothly on Firefox 3.5.5 under XP SP2.

If I can dream of future enhancements ;) :
* Mark 0-km hits on the hitmap (with a dot, a circle or the like).
* Allow direct bokmarking of different map types, e.g. link directly to the satellite map (I dont't know if the Google Maps interface allows it).
* Add a grid to the map to delimit dots.

Thanks a lot for this great tool :)
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by jrnsndrs »

Win XP/Opera 10.10 seems to work fine, at least I can't see any obvious malfunctions.

One question: Why does the hitmap give double arrows <--> instead of single arrows --> following the travel direction of the corresponding note?
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Yelverdack
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by Yelverdack »

Jes wrote:
Klazu wrote:Very cool feature, although only the dots map is being really useful when one has more notes. :wink:

Too bad that on the world map the dots are missplaced from correct location. Or maybe I missed the instructions on how to handle this?
If you use the Europe map, you can browse at the same time the world dots. At least in my case, when I use my sister's computer (mine doesnt' work very well :( )
Yes but in this google map, the size of a dot on an another continent is exactly the same (probably 30/30Km) as the ones in Europe. In the EBT world map, the other continents dots are larger.

Is it possible to know the world's dot grid somewhere ?
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by lmviterbo »

Yelverdack wrote:Is it possible to know the world's dot grid somewhere ?
avij published the official numbers 5 years ago:

Europe:
- minimum latitude: 29
- maximum latitude: 71
- minimum longitude: -12
- maximum longitude: 54
- grid size: 157 x 150

world:
- minimum latitude: -57
- maximum latitude: 83
- minimum longitude: -180
- maximum longitude: 180
- grid size: 366 x 200

I believe they are still correct.
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by Nerzhul »

One dot is exactly 0.28 lat high and 0.42038216560509554140127388535032 long wide. The grid is anchored at 29 lat and -12 long.

In future the old world dot grid won't be supported, at least not by me. It was just a crutch to scale with the lower resolution of the EBT world map.
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by androl »

lmviterbo wrote:
Yelverdack wrote:Is it possible to know the world's dot grid somewhere ?
world:
- minimum latitude: -57
- maximum latitude: 83
- minimum longitude: -180
- maximum longitude: 180
- grid size: 366 x 200

I believe they are still correct.
that's correct
http://androl.bplaced.net/googlemaps/EB ... world.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Last edited by androl on Sat Feb 19, 2011 2:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by aloxe »

Thanks a lot Nerzhul for this great improvement

I've played with it on OSX with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Flock and Camino. It all looks nice smooth. well done. I have some remarks though:
:arrow: is the frame around the map useful? because I can only see the top left corner and the frame disappears from the window.
:arrow: It looks like the size of the map is a just a little bit smaller than the size of the screen. If I display it in a small window, I have annoying scrollbars

Also because I am very excited with this new map, I will show it with a lot of feature requests hat are not
:idea: Will it be possible to use Open Street View as main map?
:idea: On hits map, should the arrow show the direction of the hit
:idea: Is it possible to have a clickable arrow to see details of the hit
:idea: It would be great if we could also zoom on the map, center it and save an URL with this configuration

Again thank you Nerzhul!
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by jrnsndrs »

aloxe wrote:Thanks a lot Nerzhul for this great improvement

(...)

Also because I am very excited with this new map, I will show it with a lot of feature requests hat are not
:idea: Will it be possible to use Open Street View as main map?
:idea: On hits map, should the arrow show the direction of the hit
:idea: Is it possible to have a clickable arrow to see details of the hit
:idea: It would be great if we could also zoom on the map, center it and save an URL with this configuration

Again thank you Nerzhul!


About idea 1: If you want to see the shop (or whatever) where the note came from, it is not going to work, as postal codes don't provide a location with enough accuracy.
About idea 2: I fully agree!
About idea 3: That might be nice if you have just a few hits, but how do you find the correct one if you have a few thousand of them crisscrossing through each other?
About idea 4: Yes, I agree there also.
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Jes
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by Jes »

jrnsndrs wrote:About idea 3: That might be nice if you have just a few hits, but how do you find the correct one if you have a few thousand of them crisscrossing through each other?
Well, it may just be the comment (if any) of the user who introduced the banknote in that place. In that case, if no comment :arrow: nothing really interesting to say about the note :arrow: no "clickable stuff" for details.

Nah well, it's just an idea. Have a nice Christmas holidays anyway :lol:
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by dserrano5 »

This is great feature! I've tested it with Firefox 3.5 and Chrome 4.0 on Ubuntu Linux. Here are my thoughts:
  • Userhits:
    • The performance when there are a lot of hits (> 4000) is somewhat poor in Firefox, especially when the zoom level is high, but just fine in Chrome, even with ~20000 hits and a high zoom level. Kudos to the chrome JS engine developers!
    • It would be nice if one could choose the thickness of the arrows. They aren't bad now, but sometimes the map ends up being invisible below all of them.
    • Like jrnsndrs, I also wonder why all arrows are bidirectional instead of depicting the note travel direction.
  • Usernotes:
    • The dots could have a dynamic transparency, depending on the zoom level - when the zoom is very low, the dots are barely visible and I don't think that fully opaque dots would be a nuisance to many people. When zooming in, the dots could be made more and more transparent until the current level, or even a bit more.
    • I like the blur effect in the dot edges :).
  • Both:
    • The first thing I missed is the legend. It's clear that the colors are the same than in the current map, but not having the legend results in an "incomplete" map.
    • Upon loading, the map size is smaller than the "drawing area" (or whatever it's called) in Firefox, but a bit larger in Chrome. I could successfully drag and drop the lower right corner of the map to manually fit the size.
    • They load correctly centered in my home town.
    • I like the choice of using the "Terrain" map by default.
    • And just out of curiosity, what does "gmb" stand for? I would expect just "gm" for "google maps" - is the "b" for beta? ;).
I'm of the kind that thinks that everything is already invented, so suggesting new features isn't my forte. I only have one idea: in the userhits map, one could filter the hits by a range of distances, for example from 0 to 1000km, or from 1000 to unlimited. That should make it easy for everybody to see the hits they are interested in. Or even, the range could be automatically adjusted when zooming in or out. What do you all think?
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by Dakkus »

jrnsndrs wrote:
aloxe wrote: :idea: Is it possible to have a clickable arrow to see details of the hit
About idea 3: That might be nice if you have just a few hits, but how do you find the correct one if you have a few thousand of them crisscrossing through each other?
Usually the hits you would really want to see deeper information about are such that you have not gotten a million hits between the same postal codes as this specially interesting hit has. This kind of eliminates the problem. When I was trying the new hitmap I was first clicking the arrows frantically, wondering why they don't work on my browser. ..until I figured out that feature hasn't been implemented yet :)
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by Nerzhul »

The Google Dotmap now features a shiny new options button which allows you to toggle:
  • the dotmap
  • the dotcount display
  • the EBT grid
Please note that the grid doesn't perfectly wrap around the date line and is not displayed on high zoom levels (< 4).

The URL-parameter for enabling the dotcount (;dotcount=1) is now supported. There's also a new parameter to pre-set the map type (;maptype=1/2/3/4, where 1 = normal map, 2 = satellite, 3 = hybrid satellite, default = terrain) which allows you to bookmark your favorite map display settings. (Example)

Unfortunately Opera 10.50 doesn't work properly with the dotmap any longer.
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Jes
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Re: Google Maps Beta Test

Post by Jes »

Cool!! I'm eager to test it :lol: :D
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