another suggestion

[kath]

Hi, folks,
Something I think would be cool: a US (or world?) map marking where users are based. (Kind of along the lines of the calendar with everyone's birthdays on it...)

With such a thing, it would be easy to connect up with other users if you're visiting someplace unfamiliar ("hhmmm, is there anyone in California?") or if you want to find people near your home base ("hmmm, who is within 100 miles of me and might want to have lunch?").

--Kath

 

[Greebo]

It's an interesting idea. However, the challenge is in programmatically mapping that information to a map. There is software that does exactly that but it runs, last time I worked with any, on the order of several thousand dollars. Unless anyone knows of some freeware or cheap shareware that can take zipcode info and plot it out on a map, I don't see this happening anytime in the near term...

Pity...its a snazzy idea!

 

[Diana]

It's an interesting idea. However, the challenge is in programmatically mapping that information to a map. There is software that does exactly that but it runs, last time I worked with any, on the order of several thousand dollars. Unless anyone knows of some freeware or cheap shareware that can take zipcode info and plot it out on a map, I don't see this happening anytime in the near term...

Pity...its a snazzy idea!

Chip did that for our Gaston's fly-in, wonder if that same map program would work?

 

[Greebo]

If you're doing a one time map generation, that's a lot easier. What we have here, however, is a fluid data source (our user database). Every time a user hits the "Who lives where" button you either need to build the map on the fly using technology that runs on an Apache web server running PHP, or you might generate a single map file once a night on a timed job - but in either case it has to be set up to be done automatically without user intervention.

 

[woodstock]

is there any way to sort the users in the member list, by state? click on member list, then sort by state?

 

[Brian Austin]

is there any way to sort the users in the member list, by state? click on member list, then sort by state?

Not really 'sorting' but you can search for people in states, provided they filled in the location field.

Go to Members List, click the Member Search function on the right side and select Advanced Search. In the Location field, put in the state identifier and click the Search button at the bottom.

As long as the user actually filled in the Location field with the correct state identifier, it will return the user in the search. If the user spelled out the state, it won't return it. It's a literal text search and doesn't really understand the states themselves.

 

[Greebo]

We do not capture state. We capture zip code, which is used for the current weather module on the home page.

 

[gibbons]

Every time a user hits the "Who lives where" button you either need to build the map on the fly using technology that runs on an Apache web server running PHP, or you might generate a single map file once a night on a timed job - but in either case it has to be set up to be done automatically without user intervention.

The way it works on the Gaston's site is this: When the user asks to see the map the database is run and everyone's lat/long is written to a text file. Then the tiger map image is built on the tiger web site. The tiger software is told to go look at the text file for locations which (eventually) it does. It actually works pretty well but it is very slow. Still, no intervention on my part is required to build the map.

Chip

 

[Greebo]

Yeah, and such "On demand" generation of a map would be equally sluggish here.

I did, while exploring the idea, find that there is a 'beta' hack done by a German vBulletin site operator which generates a pincushion map of Germany based on his user database. It's not exactly pretty, but more importantly, it executes 91 separate calls to the database to build one map on the fly.

Not acceptable. (Being Beta is also not acceptable.)

One of these days I'm going to write a .NET version of forum software that has all the features I want...