Archive for the ‘Experimental’ Category

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Geograph Mashup Challenge

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

We are pleased to announce a developer challenge to build a cool Mashup using Geograph Data/Photos. The closing date for entries is 11pm 31st March 2010.

The first prize is a Space Navigator, with 5 runner up prizes of a Geograph key ring!
Judging will be by a panel of judges and possibly a user vote on a the Challenge showcase web site (TBA).

The rules are simple:

  • Create a web site, mobile, or desktop application (or similar) that uses Geograph data
  • The application must be available for free
  • Of course free to mashup the information with other sources (in fact its encouraged!)
  • Welcome to submit multiple distinct mashups – but each needs to be substantially different.

Other than let your imagination and ingenuity run wild.

Geograph will provide to all entrants:

  • Live API to search/download Photo data – includes hosting for thumbnails only
    • (includes bespoke development at Developers discretion – will try to provide to all that ask within resource constraints)
  • Static Dumps of pretty much the whole Geograph Database (mysql format)
  • Torrent Downloads of a sample of 250,000 images
  • Potentially help with hosting if you don’t have available (please ask!)
  • All confirmed mashups will be showcased/linked on the Challange Website.

This is for Geograph British Isles, but if can incorporate Geograph Germany data too, all the better – what data is available may vary.

For inspiration, offer up my pithy attempt:
Geograph Photos on a OpenSpace Map

Entry Form!

(note this is not sponsored by 3dconnexion – its entirely Geograph run)

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Posted in API, Experimental, Geograph | No Comments »

Faceted browsing of Geograph images in Flamenco!

Saturday, January 16th, 2010

Totally accidently, via a recent Ask-Slashdot post looking for a Search Engine interface, happened across Flamenco search interface framework. It didn’t suit the asker, but its pretty close to great for Geograph, which has lots of categorization. I’ve been looking to build something like this, and have been slowly building the components, scattered around the Geograph website, but havn’t had the time and dedication to pull together. However this interface, does lots and creates a single consistent interface for browsing geograph images, by browsing multiple dimensions of data.

Flamenco screenshot

After a few stumbling blocks getting the python application running on my server (a python noob), set about importing a sample of the Geograph Archive. And frankly the results are nothing short of amazing – esp considering this is the venilla application, next to no customization for Geograph was needed. Try it out by clicking on the screenshot above, or here, wont say too much about how to use it, but its pretty intuitive. Or Direct link to an example results page

Really want to get it going on the whole Geograph archive (1.6 million photos plus) – have a few doubts about running that on my own little server, but definitely going to work towards that.

Posted in Experimental, Flamenco, Geograph | No Comments »

Geocube Geograph Clusters in Google Earth – part 2

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

Now ready with the next version of the Geograph Google Earth Clusters layer mentioned yesterday.

Google Earth Layer Geograph Google Earth Clusters

It’s the same download link, if you already have a copy, just right click and select Refresh on the “Geograph Google Earth Clusters” feature.

This has a number of advancements:

  • Filterable – click the main title in the Places panel to open configuration options in the popup balloon. Includes options to filter by keyword or Geograph contributor. (Requires Google Earth version 5)
  • Cubes/Cloud – Geocubes offers two clustering options, can how choose between then on the same popup as above
  • Thumbnails – Now shows a image thumbnail in the placemark balloons.
  • Shows a few coarse clusters when not zoomed on the British Isles
  • Source code available! Download the GPL licenced PHP source code here

But its not all rosey – this version seems to suffer from an annoying bug, when first loads sometimes the layer ‘freezes’ and doesnt automatically update as you move around. If that happens right click on the ‘Clusters’ feature in ‘Places’ and select Refresh, doing that once seems to fix it!

Thanks to Geocubes to the amazing service that powers this – highly recommended if you have larger numbers of features to display!

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Posted in Code, Experimental, Google Earth, KML, PHP, network-link | No Comments »

Geocube Geograph Clusters in Google Earth

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

It’s about time did some Google Earth hacking, so thanks to the people at Geocubes, have made a new interactive layer for Google Earth.

Geograph Google Earth Clusters

This works in a similar way to the Geograph SuperLayer, by showing coverage overview, and then zooming in to reveal more detail. The Geocubes layer has the advantage that the clusters work into a closer zoom, and updates to the geograph database make it into the layer within hours. The SuperLayer is slower updating (weeks), but navigating should be much quicker being as its based on KML regions.

You can view also a Google Maps based version of the layer, using the Geocubes API directly.

This is only version 0.1 – there is more to be done – including being able to filter the results based on words and contributor, but this is exciting enough on its own. Once done a bit of work on tidying up the code plan to release it so others can use the geocubes service to create their own layer like this :) Watch this space!

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Posted in Experimental, Geograph, Google Earth, KML, Nearby, SuperLayer | 5 Comments »

Geolocated websites on the go?

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Want to quickly access location based websites, while on the go?

Then enter:

m.nearby.org.uk

into your mobile browser.

Very privative, only goes to the nearby location links service, and a few pages on geograph. But between them give access to a fair number of (UK esp) websites.

Disclaimer: Only tested on a Google Android phone so far. Doesn’t seem to pickup GPS position (yet). To be honest surprised not found something like this in the Android Market.

If works out will probably add direct links to other websites, and possibly make it configurable so can choose which sites to show :)

Posted in Experimental, Google Maps, Location Links, Nearby, geo, maps | No Comments »

Multi Destination Routing + Altitude Profile

Friday, May 8th, 2009

There is a tool on nearby for taking a multi destination route – and loading it into Google Earth. It was also used to load directions into a “My Map”, but thats basically redundant now, but as the script just converts the directions to a KML file, there are many useful things that can be done with it…

Such as plotting an altitude profile with gpsvisualizer.com***, but to make it even easier, have added a button to the page, that links direct to the form on gpsu with the data prefilled as well as the ‘add altitude’ option enabled.

Enjoy! (Oh and let me know if there are any other interesting destinations would like to load the KML file into!)

Multi Destination Routing Toolkit

*** which Adam recently added the functionalty to add alitude automatically – previsoully a problem as the KML files from Google maps dont include altitude

Posted in Experimental, Google Maps, Nearby, network-link | No Comments »

Where in British Isles are people viewing photos?

Friday, April 24th, 2009

view-depth1-9
In a similar vain to the maps produced here, now that Geograph British Isles has a view counter for each and every photo, we can plot maps of viewing. :)

This map is obviouslly heavily influenced by where photos have actully been submitted; s for comparison here is a depth map of photo submissions.

Don’t know what it means, or if actully useful, but sure is pretty!

 

(click the thumbnail to see 1px per km scale version)

Posted in Coverage Maps, Experimental, Geograph | No Comments »

Run (& Develop) Geograph locally!

Saturday, December 13th, 2008

I’ve prepared a VMware virtual machine, that contains a ready to run instance of Geograph (British Isles). This was primarlly for my own purposes as my current working copy runs on windoz, so didn’t replicate fully the real enviroment. Now I can still run my IDE on windows, but have the code running in a almost totally faithful copy. 

The compressed image is available from:

Geograph Torrents Downloads (346.62 MB)

Requirements to run the image:

  • WMware workstation or WMare player
  • a 7z uncompression tool (apparently the best compression method for VM images)
  • At least 3GB diskspace (the image’s disk uncompressed needs 2GB – but could expand to 10GB)
  • a web-browser (to actully view something) 
  • A smattering of linux know-how (to actully login and view the files – also to try changing things) 
  • To do anything useful, experience with PHP, mySQL and website development in general, is a big bonus

The image’s application database is empty – it contains no photos or other data from Geograph British Isles, other than the bare minimum to get running (but contains the non-copyrighted BI geodata for map plotting etc). If you want a developers dump to try loading some real data please get in touch with the team. 

Hopefully this should be a real quickstart way to get a local working copy running – ready setup with required software, cronjobs etc – ideal for:

  • Just finding out more about how the site works :)
  • Doing real development work – with the aim to contribute back (its ready setup for easy SVN commits) 
  • To customise the code for a new country! (we have plans to make this even easier)

(NB. only torrent download currently available – others probably available on request)

Enjoy!

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Posted in Experimental, Geograph | 1 Comment »

MGRS coordinate entry

Friday, December 12th, 2008

Prompted by one of those infernal* posts on a Google Maps group, have finally been inspired to cobble together a MGRS -> Lat/Long conversion. It seems trvial, the UTM->MGRS conversion is quite simple, but there are a few gotchas!, so after much puzzleing over some C code from GeoTrans (and Trial&Error for good measure!), I think** have something working.

Anyway try it out here: 

Coordinate Flyto for Google Earth/Maps

also added today is a tickbox to open the result direct in Google Maps (rather than Google Earth). 

I’ll tidy it up and post the code, which is based on the PHPcoord conversion class, incase others have a use. I’ll also add it to the API – and possibly even back port it into Perl for use on the on site coordinate covertor. 

Finally possibly of interest is the realisation that the MGRS Google Earth Gridlines layer, will actully load directly in Google Maps, so:

MGRS Gridlines in Google Maps

the lines should update a few seconds after dragging/zooming. Ideally will suppress the big blue pins (which are show as numbers in GE) , but not tonight…

 

 

* in the nicest possible sence!

** I tested it by converting utm->mgrs->utm globally on a worldwide 1 degree grid – all check out with absolute precision.

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Posted in Code, Coordinate Converter, Experimental, Google Earth, Google Maps, KML, PHP, mgrs | 9 Comments »

How Geograph survived the BoingBoing effect…

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

… so its 1am on an idle Wednesday (and you really thinking of heading to bed) when someone on the forum mentions the 1 millionth photo will be going soon, so you think Na, its too early, but out of interest you go and check anyway… And you find in fact its right there about to go in a matter of seconds (going on moderation time) … and then you exclaim,

oh carp, oh carp, oh carp (or words to that effect)

… why do I say that? Well the thing is I know that Geograph runs pretty close to the limit* hosting wise, and this milestone, could, should and probably will, make a big splash, suddenly have mental images of Geograph exploding in a fireball, … not good!

(note, the rest of this post uses a few technical terms, and is rather long, turn away now if that scares you…)

(more…)

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Posted in Experimental, Geograph | No Comments »

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