I’ve always wanted to have my own WhereIsKevin.com — even though someone managed to buy that domain before me.
Basically, though, I think it would be interesting to have my own personal mapping site that tracks me via GPS. Blog entries, pictures, etc. could be geocoded and linked to my current position. That way, if I’m at a place I’m bookmarked on my site, you’ll see some snapshots and whatnot. Or maybe if I’m at work, it could display my phone number at the office but if I’m at home, it could display my cell phone number…
It’s not a completely new idea, of course… I think Flickr and some others use geocoding these days. I’m just looking for something personal and specific to me. Plus, even though my mapping page currently ties in with Google Maps, I’d prefer to make my own custom map. That way, I don’t need to hit up Google’s servers and I can also protect my privacy a bit more.
Anyhow, I’ve recorded the coordinates for my most-frequented spots… so I just need to find a good way of doing some dynamic plotting. I’m not too good with web-based languages, so it might take a bit. Should be fun, though. In the end, I plan on having my basemap made to look a bit like a simplistic treasure map. I’ll also probably get it to calculate things like distance and direction, so I can show whether I’m headed away from or to a bookmarked location and maybe even if I’ve been there for a while.
If anyone feels like helping me with this, let me know either here or via email.
dscott:
Part II was actually pretty neat. Currently, I’m using Mologogo as the app providing the GPS coordinates to my website. I’m using a very buggy beta from them at the moment. It’s been good enough for just basic data delivery, but I may need to hack around with it a bit at some point if I get serious about the GPS stuff.
What I’m more interested in is just something basic… A simple scatter-plot with landmarks and my current position would suffice, really. I don’t get nearly involved in the spacial stuff as my buddy Josh does. Simple X-Y coordinates, though, I can handle.
It’s nothing too complex. I know the general lat/lon ranges I’m working with. More or less, it’s just simply plotting of those numbers. It’s a small region I’m working with, so things like the curvature of the world really don’t apply…
For the basemap, I’ll probably have a simple grid, points, and labels at first. My eventual goal, however, is a “Treasure Map” style design encorporating my main landmarks.
You might find this article interestig:
http://www.codeproject.com/vb/net/WritingGPSApplications1.asp
Hmm, so do you plan on doing some sort of conversion from GPS coord down to an a simple X/Y plot (A6/B4) on your map? Or take a sort of “slice” from a map that uses GPS LAT/LONG coords and use that as some sort of overlay onto your map?
Sounds interesting, I’ll have to keep checking back on the progress.