ZoomIn to Australia
ZoomIn is a Google Maps-like system using Australian data. In addition to being an online street directory you can add places of interest, write comments, join a group and share photos about a place. It also has a developer API for mapping and geocoding.
ZoomIn originated in New Zealand. It looks like ProjectX and SDX have teamed up to bring it to Australia.
The website has been developed to encourage exploration. If you go to the home page and type the first few letters of a place name into the search box you get a list of possible matching options. This feature only seems to return streets and suburbs. It would be nice to have it return places of interest.
ZoomIn also uses a hierarchical URI scheme to represent locations that I haven’t seen before. For instance, you’ll find the suburb of Mangerton in the city of Wollongong at:
http://zoomin.com.au/australia/nsw/wollongong/mangerton/
Append <street+name>/<no>/ to identify an address. Simple, effective.
I have requested a developer API key. I’m curious to see how much effort is required to embed a map in a blog post. More to come…
What i was going to post is that while the projectx guys have done a great job with this product pushing aussie web mapping, i am a bit disheartened by the fact that at its core, its just Ka-Map (http://ka-map.maptools.org/) with some extra "addons".
I emailed zoomIn last year about at least contributing some of their modifications back into the CVS but alas nothing has happened and there is still no recognition of kamap's existence in the project. (The js is still 85% kamap code bundled into one api js file .. go on, take a look)
And the most obvious question ... what data are they using? PSMA & GNAF? Info on geocoding service? Come on lads, more info!
As for the heirarchical structure Andrew, check out mod_rewrite - you can do some seemingly complex things quite easily! :)
Chris
Chris Tweedie — 4 May 2006, 09:57
I just generated an API key for you.
FYI: Our system is built on Ruby on Rails, Postgres and some of the kaMap tools. We have had to make a lot of customisation to get it to run faster !
John — 4 May 2006, 18:05