Archive for the ‘Google Maps API’ Category

Placement of the American Museum of Natural History

Friday, September 7th, 2007

Today, our Quality Assurance team noticed a discrepancy on the placement of the American Museum of Natural History in Google Maps versus on Stickymap.

Take a look at this result from Google Maps.  Notice that it puts you on Park Avenue on the Upper East Side.  The actual museum is on the West Side, as the address tells you.  Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a map where you can simply move items or alert the administrators if it is incorrectly placed?  Well, you can move markers on Stickymap.  Take a look at the American Museum of Natural History on Stickymap below:

http://www.stickymap.com/mappage?m=1181

Posted in Google Maps API | 39 Comments »

New Version Update

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

As of today, we are still hard at work on our interface updates. Some of our ideas are coming into a clearer focus. Creating a marker is going to be very easy – we have been able to make good use the “info window” from Google Maps. However, we don’t want to make creation too easy. Unlike Google mymaps, we’re going to ask our users to make sure they’re not posting a duplicate. The trick is to strike a balance between the integrity of our data and the flow of user experience.

More specific updates are to come soon. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get some screen shots up here.

Max

Posted in Development updates, Google Maps API, Interface | 1 Comment »

Marker Creation Update

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

This week we continue working on marker creation. The new marker creation app is going to be a lot more user friendly than the old. Here I describe a few of the changes we’ll be making. Keep your suggestions coming!

1) We’re going to make good use of the infowindows in Google Maps. These are bubbles that appear above the markers. They will be positioned correctly, so we don’t have to worry about them hiding the view of the actual marker.

2) The interface will include our new and improved icon selector, which will appear on a redesigned, dynamic sidebar and/or in an infowindow.

3) Google Map’s marker dragging feature will allow users place the marker just where they want it. It smooth and must easier to use and understand.

4) The FCK editor – which is the fancy text area used for marker descriptions – will be loaded only when it is needed. This means it will no longer have to be loaded when first going to stickymap.com, which will improve our load times.

Posted in Google Maps API, Interface, Marker creation, Usability | 68 Comments »

New Google Maps Features

Saturday, June 30th, 2007

When we first started Stickymap in December 2005, the Google Maps API did not have all of the features that it has today. This led us to skip over some desired functionality and in some cases come up with complex workarounds. Now that we’re once again revising the site, we’re going to include some of these new Google features. Here are three examples:

1) Scroll-wheel Zoom. On Google Maps, users can use their scroll wheel to quickly zoom in and out of the map. This makes Stickymap difficult to use for Google Maps users, because their scroll wheel does not work. In our latest version, users will be able to use their scroll wheel to zoom in and out of the map.

2) Google geocoding. Geocoding is the act of taking a string representing an address, city, or zip code and turning it into latitude and longitude coordinates which we need for searching and placing markers on the map. Now that Google has it’s own geocoding routine, we’re going to use it.

3) Marker Dragging. Google now allows markers to be draggable. This is going to be very useful (and more user friendly) when creating and moving markers. We’ll be exploring use of the dragging feature.

Max

Posted in Google Maps API, Interface | No Comments »