Thursday, March 29, 2007

Draw lines and routes with Tagzania

New feature in Tagzania: Now you can draw routes. For example, this one.



Registered users, when you post from Tagzania's interface, you'll get the choice, point or route. To draw one, find an initial place, and proceed point by point from there. Tagzania also works as a pedometer and you will measure the length of the track until you finish (in kilometers or miles, depending of your system of units of choice). Once you draw the line, proceed as you do with common locations: put a title, description, add resources to document it and choose some tags or keywords for classification.

Routes appear as single points in overall maps, as here, but you see they have a new directional green pinpoint. Clicking on that, you get to the route. Two icons now, reds for points, directional greens for routes. We try keeping Tagzania simple.

Routes are downloadable as KML files to Google Earth, and they can be pasted or embeded in blogs as all other Tagzania maps. Integration with GPS tools will be next. Enjoy, and make some trials drawing some walks, travels, whatever... A line can mark lots of things, from small scales (the running of the bulls in Pamplona is shorter than a kilometer) to great lengths (the migration paths of the monarch butterfly of North America).

tagzania - Thu, 29 Mar 2007 15:34:30 -0400


Source: http://www.tagzania.com/blog/news/draw-lines-and-routes-with-tagzania
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Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Search for addresses in Sweden

You can now search for postal addresses in Sweden when posting thru Tagzania's interface (for registered users). This was an undocumented feature of the Google Maps API that we found reading this post.

Try with Birger Jarlsgatan 57B SE Stockholm, Sweden or Cramérgatan 3, Visby, SE. Remember the tips for address searches, and just add the country code SE after the Swedish address for a nice match.

tagzania - Wed, 28 Mar 2007 11:44:11 -0400


Source: http://www.tagzania.com/blog/news/search-for-addresses-in-sweden
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Friday, March 23, 2007

GeoRSS in Tagzania: new opportunities for developers

Some technical news of interest: Google has announced that its Google Maps API, the framework that powers the maps that you create at Tagzania, now supports GeoRSS.

GeoRSS is RSS with geographic information inserted, obviously. And it's the RSS format that is offered by Tagzania since we launched in 2005. Tagzania is one of the most exhaustive places to get varied GeoRSS feeds in Internet. You may subscribe to any Tagzania user or tag page, adding the RSS feed in your newsreader of choice. You probably won't notice any latitude-longitude data there... But it's there, and it can be put into use.

With Google's official support, uses of GeoRSS may increase. In the blogpost mentioning it, look, there's even a Tagzania example in the part of Google, to illustrate how it integrates into maps: The new 7 wonders map, which has a RSS source as all other maps in Tagzania, has been mashed-up with other info layers in that Google example there.

That's interesting. Developers can, very easily, with just some lines of code, integrate any Tagzania RSS feed in other map mashups. That's good for developers, and good for Tagzania. This is about sharing geographic content and information, and as Tagzania's information is open content, its Creative Commons ShareAlike license lets you reuse the information of this site elsewhere, for commercial purporses as well, as long as it doesn't become copyrighted material.

Developers can also create GeoRSS based map mashups colaboratively. For instance, a community map integrated into a local website. How do you get people in the community to encode a RSS entry with data formated as GeoRSS? Don't instruct them about XML standards or the semantic web... Just tell them: add your place in Tagzania, tag it with some keyword, that's all. The developer just needs to adjust the map to the given Tagzania RSS feed for that tag or kewyord, and it's done.

If you're a website developer, plan to create mashups on your own, contact with us and give us feedback, we'll be glad to hear about you.

tagzania - Fri, 23 Mar 2007 07:05:42 -0400


Source: http://www.tagzania.com/blog/news/georss-in-tagzania-new-opportunities-for-developers
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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Move!

Now you can move a given placemark in Tagzania.



Try copying someone's else location, or editing one of yours. It's easy.

tagzania - Tue, 13 Mar 2007 12:45:14 -0400


Source: http://www.tagzania.com/blog/news/move
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Friday, March 2, 2007

Nicer coverage for Denmark, Switzerland and elsewhere

Tagzania benefited yesterday from a new update in Google Maps imagery that covers many world regions. Several areas in Sydney have now incredible detail. We see people surfing the waves! Some more interesting spots here.

Hi resolution in Sydneyhi resolution in switzerland

Two European countries get overall detailed coverage: Denmark and Switzerland. For Danish spots, here you have an example, the Kastrup bath platform, illustrative of the latest architectural trends, according to the experts. In Switzerland, color brightness is astonishing but go to the Alps for an awesome experience: the Swiss data that Google got has altitude detail for Google Earth and seeing that in 3D is wonderful. For instance go to north face of mt. Eiger and click on the KML link that will open Google Earth. Good flight!

tagzania - Fri, 02 Mar 2007 07:11:41 -0500


Source: http://www.tagzania.com/blog/news/nicer-coverage-for-denmark-switzerland-and-elsewhere
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Thursday, March 1, 2007

International Polar Year: one planet, one map

The International Polar Year began today, March 1st. Webmasters at IPY.org, the official site, thought about Tagzania as a way to raise awareness. They made a call to all schools and educational institutions interested in the Polar Year to launch a virtual ballon; that is, to mark in Tagzania the location of their polar-related activity. The new embedable maps with up to 200 locations came just in time to show the big map that has resulted.

Climate change is a worrisome reality, and polar regions are among the most affected by it. Geographic awareness and education are key factors for the social changes that will be needed to stop the trend. >From Kuglugtuk High School in Nunavut, Canada, to the headquarters of the US Geological Service, we all share one planet, and, for today, one map as well.

tagzania - Thu, 01 Mar 2007 15:56:56 -0500


Source: http://www.tagzania.com/blog/news/international-polar-year-one-planet-one-map
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