[Geowanking] rewriting map URLs?

[Barry Hunter]

I'm not quite sure I follow how this would be a violation of any TOS, as all
you are doing is linking to the Map Pages that the visitor sees as normal?
After all that's what the web about, interlinking ;-) If you tried to link
direct to map tiles, well that's a different matter.

This sounds very similar to what I am trying to do here:
http://www.nearby.org.uk/coord.cgi?p=16.395+-73.000&f=full

Basically one link to this page, and it provides all sorts of links to
various map services, and location searches.
It also provides coordinate conversion (US ZIP, lat/long, UTM, NAC etc...) 
to be
able to link to various sites that all use (slightly) different coordinate
structures.

In fact in the UK (e.g. Grid Reference or Postcode) it links to far more
services:
http://www.nearby.org.uk/coord.cgi?p=TQ2779

I'm not sure my hosting is upto large scale linking as it's quite involved
with all the calculations, but the site does have a steady growth of sites
linking to it.

But I imagine your service would only be worthwhile if a large number of
sites used it. However a similar take on this is to have a browser plugin
(there's a Firefox one that links to GeoURL), that gets coordinates from the
page and provides a button to goto your favourite mapping service (possibly
via the CGI script you mention). This I think works off the Geo-meta tags
but could I suppose be extended to try to identify coordinates in the page.
Even have a list of rules for specific sites like the DCP or Geocaching...

Barry

- www.nearby.org.uk - www.geograph.co.uk -


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kevin Elliott" <kevin at phunc.com>
To: <geowanking at lists.burri.to>
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 3:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Geowanking] rewriting map URLs?


> In many cases, this could violate terms of agreement/licensing if hosted 
> as a public service. If it's a small site, the chances of anyone caring 
> are slim, but do keep that in mind. I don't necessarily agree with it, but 
> it makes sense at the current time.
>
> This is not a new concept, there are scripts out there that do just this. 
> A little googling and review of various blogs will give you snippets of 
> code. Some even proxy the tile images and cache them on the web server for 
> you.
>
> This would certainly be most useful as a web service as well.
>
> Regards,
>
> Kevin
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Russell Nelson" <nelson at crynwr.com>
> To: <geowanking at lists.burri.to>
> Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 8:38 PM
> Subject: [Geowanking] rewriting map URLs?
>
>
>> I'm thinking that it would be AWFULLY handy to have a cgi script which
>> would take a documented set of geo-parameters, and after consulting
>> the cookies that came in with the request, rewrite those parameters
>> into a URL for an appropriate mapping site.  So instead of everybody
>> having to link to Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Terraserver-USA, Mapquest,
>> Topozone, etc etc etc, you could have a link to a site running this
>> cgi script.  The first time a visitor clicked on the link, they would
>> be asked for their preference.
>>
>> I'd be happy to host this script, but more to the point: what is the
>> chance of convincing folks like the Degree Confluence Project, or
>> Geocaching, to link to me instead of to the usual list of suspects?
>>
>> In other words, should I bother?
>>
>> -- 
>> --my blog is at     blog.russnelson.com         | with some experience
>> Crynwr sells support for free software  | PGPok |     you know what to 
>> do.
>> 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241       | with more experience
>> Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  |                       |     you know what not 
>> to do.
>> _______________________________________________
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>
>
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