Evangelism/Firefox3.5/35Days/Articles/geolocationDemo

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Geolocation API and free data providers

Doug Turner, the man behind the Geolocation implementation in Firefox 3.5, has written a great article about this new mechanism (FIXME: link to the hacks.m.o Doug's article).

Here is a demo showing how you can enjoy this feature, only with free tools and free data.

Geolocation API Demo with OpenLayers, OpenStreetMap and GeoNames

The demo draws a map centered on the position given by the navigator. Don't forget to click "Share location".

Ok, that's the basis of the Geolocation. But there are several data available in the Internet you can use to make your user happier, and some, are free (as a speech).

You can see several information displayed around your location, like the names of cities, villages, lake, parks, ... all these information are from the GeoName service. If you click on the name, you'll see more information from Wikipedia. The map itself is free too (thanks OpenStreepMap).

The layer mechanism is powered by OpenLayers. A free Javascript library.

That's a kind of data mashup from free tools and free data.

If you want to know more:

screen1.png

screen3.png

screen2.png

some comments

  • too preachy - should be more pragmatic
  • need some information about Geoname & OpenStreetmap
  • if the accurate is high, add geodata to a bigger neighborhood, but still zoom as deep as possible
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