If you open the ‘Show Search Options’ option, there is an entry ‘Related Maps’ - this mainly seems to be GeoRSS feeds its found out in the wild, but does include maps from ‘My Maps’, but strangely not KML files (which are mostly indexed in User-Created Content I guess)

Oh and if you where wondering, yes did find this when checking something out on geograph. (Note the link at the top to view Related Maps)

Still waiting for the day when we get good access to Googles GeoIndex, the AJAX Search API gives very limited (32 results max, and no urls! oh and doesnt include all the options included in the ‘options’ dropdown on Google Maps either), feels so this data could/should be exposed more?

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

So to that end have been looking for PHP code to do the conversion, but thanks to a little bit of inspiration from FieldenMaps.info’s Javascript Ireland Coordinate Converter (an excellent resource in its own right!), realised it would be simple to add to the conversion class we already use. In fact as ITM is based on GRS80 which is effectivly WGS84 the conversion was just a matter of plugging in the constants used by ITM, and the code just worked.

Better yet as Geograph is Open Source (and we got permission to open source the code based on OSGB’s conversion spreadsheet), the code is available for anyone to use as a PHP class. It should be trivial to add support to our Javascript class - which will do shortly!

Grab the class from Geograph SVN (or even better do a SVN checkout!) and put it somewhere safe. (but you will probably want to remove the “extends Conversions” bit from the definition - we use that for convience in Geograph source)

Then can just use it

$conv = new ConversionsLatLong;
list($lat,$lng) = $conv->itm_to_wgs84($e,$n);

But as we already use the same code for Irish Grid, and OSGB36 British National Grid, can also use it for them, and even IG< ->ITM conversion

list($lat,$lng) = $conv->itm_to_wgs84($e,$n);
list($lat,$lng) = $conv->irish_to_wgs84($e,$n,true);
list($lat,$lng) = $conv->osgb_to_wgs84($e,$n);

list($e,$n) = $conv->wgs84_to_itm($lat,$lng);
list($e,$n) = $conv->wgs84_to_irish($lat,$lng,true);

list($e,$n) = $conv->wgs84_to_osgb36($lat,$lng);
//even a short convience function to create a 10 figure grid reference
$gr10 = $conv->osgb36_to_gridref($e,$n);

See it used in anger here and here.

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

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)

But they have gone a step further! This screenshot probably explains it best

nice.

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Warning: it seems the ‘Save to My Maps’ overwrites the previous content of a My Map, not append like I would expect
Edit: maybe its only temporally, if it happens to you, try disabling and reenabling the map - see comments.

ScenicOrNot is a new mashup from the good people at mySociety - with the simple aim of finding the scenic spots across Great Britain; I’ve no idea what the super secret purpose of this site is, but they have promised to release the data, so it could be used in lots of exciting ways… 

Oh and of course the photos are sourced from Geograph British Isles.

Go rate a grid square now! Also at http://digg.com/u18iG

Anyway so I created a little script for my own use to cut down the URL automatically:

URLsnipper for Google URLs

It has a good understanding of Google Maps URLs, and reasonable for Google Web search, so it makes a fair attempt at deducing unneeded bits, however it also provides tickboxes to truely customise the result to your own taste

Example (a fairly mundane one)

will add support for other urls at some point, blogsearch, news etc. 

Partly inspired by this

The path followed by the ship is regular, as though its a search grid?

The question is did they find something? And the Sun exposee is just a coverup for the real discovery - hide something in plain sight and all that…

I can’t keep quiet about this any longer, its getting me more and more annoyed. Google Maps includes a “Link” function - which creates a link to the current map, which is very useful - particully as the map is estentially ‘ajax’ style, but the parameters are definitly starting to suffer rot and lack of ‘love’ in maintaining them.

For example to just display a simple KML file, you get this corker:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=http:%2F%2Fwww.geograph.org.uk%2Ffeed%2Frecent.kml&g=Any+Street,+London,+UK&ie=UTF8&ll=55.053203,-3.208008&spn=17.762194,33.793945&z=5

There are so many things wrong with this url, its unreal. The first is the source - doesnt do
anything as far as I can see, an empty (but immensely useful) geocode, etc; but somewhat ironically I have HAD to edit the url provided by the function before I was willing to post it here, see that g param - yes that’s my (now made up!) home address.

Yes thats right, if you not careful Google Maps might get you to inadvertently share your home address - seriouslly WTF!

Ok, now I made my point will add a bit of background. It turns out the g param is the previouslly run ‘local search’, it would seem as it could provide extra context to the search*. But if you havent yet made a search - ie you sharing you first search - then its your starting location. And lets face it a fair number of people surely put their home/work etc location as the default location.

* consider this url:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=pizza&sll=51.500152,-0.126236&sspn=0.625781,1.235962&g=London&ie=UTF8&z=9

I searched for London (place) and then pizza (what), as two actions, but because the map was already loaded for london on the search, I didnt bother entering london again (which is a reasonably intutive thing to do) - and just ‘pizza’ in the query would have a harder time recreating the map. (although in this case the coordinates do the same job)

Ok you could ask why do I care, but the simple fact is I read URLs - they give a serious clue to what the page is, but with lots of clutter that is much harder…

(and for what ever reason I share a lot of Google Links, and about 90% of the times I have to edit them manually to get what I want)

btw, the link above could be recreated as

http://maps.google.com/?q=http://www.geograph.org.uk/feed/recent.kml&ll=55.053203,-3.208008&spn=17.762194,33.793945&z=5&hl=en

with NO loss, and if *I* was sharing the link would reduce it to

http://maps.google.com/?q=http://www.geograph.org.uk/feed/recent.kml&ll=55.0,-3.2&z=5

which does pretty much what I want (but admit that sort of reduction would be risky done automatically - so prefer it just stopped at the previous step)

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