Guestmap: a funny evolution of the guestbook
In version 2.0 of this website there was a simple guestbook application where everyone could leave a message.
I wanted to maintain this facility so everyone can write something even if is not interested (sounds impossible) in the topics and articles of the blog.
Of course I cannot simply use the old application, I wanted to do something more funny, so I came out with this idea (well, nothing new or not already seen indeed), a guest map, where everyone can pin himself or herself on and leave a message.
I've already studied something about the Google Maps API, but that was the first version of the API, the new one has many new and interesting features I wanted to try.
Some features I've implemented:
- on-the-fly geocoding of the given location with confirm of the coordinates for browsers with javascript enabled
- standard geocoding through a POST which uses the Google geocoding web-service for text browsers (or when javascript is not available)
- a click on each guest name centers the map on its location
- sidebar statistics by country and gender, a click on each link filters the guests shown on the map and in the main page
Some others are still somewhere in my brain, so there is a remote possibility to see them implemented in the future...
Now, after this long and boring blog post you can have some fun here dragging the map and searching for guests around the world, maybe you will find your neighbor... who knows?! ;)
Don't forget to pin yourself on the map and thus contribute to the growth of the population!
I love feeds
Yes!
Feeds are simple to use and many well known web sites provides web services with a lot of different feed's flavours, so it's simple for everyone to find the favourite format and use it on web pages.
Recently I've used the personalized feeds from last.fm and flickr.com for adding some fun in the sidebar of the main page.
last.fm
I've got a profile there and now I use the recent tracks feed for showing the last 5 listened tracks.
There is a little problem with this feed, I've seen that it has a sort of validity time, if you don't play something for a while the feed returned is empty.
As workaround I use a caching system, if the feed returns some valid data, it is cached, thus the last tracks played are always available.
flickr.com
I've started to use Flickr to store and organize my photos and now I use the personalized public photos feed for adding the last 5 photos in the sidebar.
I've choosen the RSS 2.0 format which provides also the links to the 75x75 px thumbnails! Cool!
For both I use 2 Perl modules, LWP::Simple and XML::Simple.
With the first I download the feed, with the second I parse it and extract the data I need to feed the sidebar template...
Simple uh?!
Do you like cookies?
As promised I've added the `Remember me' feature in the contacts and comments pages.
So now it's possible to fill the personal data form and check the `Remember me' option to get all the data dumped in a little and harmless cookie in your browser.
Next time you'll access those pages, the personal data form will be automagically filled with the data stored in the cookie.
You can delete the cookie by uncheck the `Remember me' option before send a new comment or an E-mail.
I've also removed the SMS feature in the contacts page because the mobile phone company have disabled the service... what a pity!