hobolog :: Web Development

Some time has passed since I worked with WordPressDevelopment.com on this site for athletes using the Trakker GPS system, but I see the site has since gone live. This was a heavy customization involving a modified Geo Mashup 1.2 and ExtInfoWindow library. There are a lot of little visual treats awaiting visitors in the various maps on the site. Other challenges were highly specific templates – the info window in some global maps behaves differently than in similar maps on other pages. I learned some good things that will increase the flexibility of Geo Mashup in the future, although I still don’t have an easy solution to things like visually customized info windows.

People like me who use a GPS unit to track their movements often end up with a GPX file full of incomprehensible data at some point. There are many ways to make sense of the data using maps and graphs, but my favorite so far is Jürgen Berkemeir’s GPX Viewer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t clear how to make good use of it in a WordPress post. To remedy that, and add some US English user features (while preserving the German and metric originals), I worked up a new WordPress plugin. It’s quite simple and lightly tested at this point, but feel free to take it for a spin.

• Only non-commercial use is allowed to comply with Berkemeir’s license requirements. WordPress repository plugins are not allowed to have this restriction (they must be GPLv2 compatible), so I won’t be able to make it available for automatic installation.
• download gpx-viewer-0.3.zip
• Sample Viewer:

• GPX Viewer Track Map and Graphs (viking-20090926)

This will be my last release announcement here, for version 1.2.9 of Geo Mashup. If you’re listening here for release announcements, subscribe instead to the project download feed:

http://code.google.com/feeds/p/wordpress-geo-mashup/downloads/basic

The change log will be tracked by version in the Milestone field on the issues page:

http://code.google.com/p/wordpress-geo-mashup/issues/list?can=2&q=milestone=1.2.9

Happy upgrading!

Sometimes quickie projects are the most fun. Vernal had me write the recipe changer for Square Deal Farm’s new website in exchange for maple syrup. Can’t wait to try it!

The crisp design of this wildlife sanctuary and retreat center site is by Free Range Studios. My contribution was to implement some jQuery interactivity, like the expanding footer menu, and a fairly complicated navigation system. No Google maps this time around, but I did work a bit on the fun little sanctuary map. Now I want to visit this place!

How many times has someone used this site to encourage President Obama to make progress during the climate talks in Copenhagen? I wrote a WordPress plugin that will instantly create as many atomic counters as needed, and some client side AJAX to keep track of all the different types of actions one can take. Try one out, and maybe we’ll see how the site handles six figures, or seven…

This video sharing application was built with the CodeIgniter PHP framework and makes heavy use of the Facebook API. Both of these were new to me when I came on board to fix some problems with the existing application. My impression of CodeIgniter is good, I may use it again for web applications that don’t need a whole content management system. The Facebook API does not leave such a good impression. Despite a maze of online documentation, I had to learn the important things through experimentation. I’ve learned a lot about sharing content, especially with Facebook, but the customized videos are still magic to me!

Time for another maintenance release of Geo Mashup:

• Change Log
• Upgrading

This art project based on the concept of traffic islands as public space uses maps as one of many perspectives on the subject. Fairly standard Geo Mashup customizations are used in creative ways to produce engaging interactions. For a project with a limited budget, you may find it difficult to stop browsing, even if you’re nowhere near Los Angeles.

Today is the second anniversary of the project, which looks like it has a long life ahead of it.

I’ve made a maintenance release of Geo Mashup that should resolve a few minor issues. Happy upgrading.

• Issue 228 – Inline location (geo_mashup_save_location) not working
• Issue 219 – locate_template() undefined in WordPress 2.6
• Adjusted sub-cat titles in the tabbed index control to show only when they have located children