Show your ljfriends on a Yahoo map

[carpediem1970]

Pretty simple - just lays out all your lj friends on a map. Enter your name at the form at the bottom of the page to show your friends instead of mine:)

You can zoom in and out and use the typical Yahoo map functions.

It now makes source code for you to paste into your journal when it is done.

Click on the map to see a map of my lj friends.

Comments

[venus_orbiting]

That's pretty damn cool. However, if the person's location isn't on this map, their icon is placed in a random spot. This happens both with users who write strange things like "The shadow of utopia, United States" (she got placed in Florida) and users who live in other countries, such as the UK.

[carpediem1970]

Yep - unfortunately the geolocator from yahoo does everything it can to resolve the address. Even the really weird ones.

[carpediem1970]

I love it;)

[catamorphism]

Very nice. Adding some jitter to the coordinates for icons that belong in the same location would be a nice addition, though -- i.e., I have perhaps 8 or 10 friends in Berkeley but I can only see the "top" one.

[carpediem1970]

That's a good suggestion - I'll definitely add it.

[catamorphism]

Also, it would be great if the userpics scaled up in size when you zoomed in on the map.

[carpediem1970]

Actually I'll be adding that soon - just need a couple hours add the option and test it.

[catamorphism]

There's already a Google Maps friends map, though it doesn't use userpics to nifty effect the way this one does.

I checked that

[gh4acws]

and while it correctly positions German friends where they belong, Sandy Hook , New Jersey is not in Mississippi (near NO btw ) , West Yorkshire ( a friend in Leeds ) is not marked and neither is Israel.
Apparently the engine used for finding the geo-coordinates gives up when it does not find the first term in a geographical statement : thus New Zealand is shown but West Yorkshire, United Kingdom is not.

Room for improvement. ( not to mention that Google does not think it necessary to provide actual maps at google.maps for non english speaking countries it seems. - [ correction: only the US, Canada and the UK have maps - and a small bit of northern Italy where it touches France - all of Europe,Asia, Australia is white spots on the map, Terra Incognita. -- if I had access to Googles database I would add a few "here be Dragons" , ( or maybe "here be hobbits" in the case of NZ )]

Note: the icon shows the ME-centric view of the world.

[blob]

*baffled* All I can see is the United States. Where most of my friends don't actually live. Meh.

[carpediem1970]

I need to switch to a global geocoder when I find a good one.

quoting: "just lays out all* your lj friends "

[gh4acws]

*provided that your friends live in America and not in one of those insignificant flyspeck countries. ( Sorry I am sick of those definitions of Everywhere [ as long as it is what we think is anywhere ] If they are from those places we just stick them somewhere, after all it is not as if they could protest, as America is always right. I will admit, that on the basic scale some countries are pretty small in area and as far as that goes I might find it acceptable if say the 3 listings that state Germany were all placed centrally there ( Berlin is NOT central btw ) even though Cologne, Munich and Stuttgart are not exactly small towns.

Re: quoting: "just lays out all* your lj friends "

[carpediem1970]

I know - I just haven't had time to find a better geocoder - yahoo's was quick and easy to use. I'm suprised the geocoder doesn't at least try to know the location of entire countries - that should be easy enough to get. I'll fix the geocoder when I find a better one:)