Filed under: Developer, Web services, Web
Tiny Geo-coder, for all of your latitude and longitude needs
I have to confess that, until today, I was still converting latitude and longitude by Googling "convert GPS coordinates" and putting it into whatever came up first. That just changed when I found Tiny Geo-coder. It converts coordinate pairs to addresses, and vice versa. Not only that, but it has an API, so you can use it in other web projects that require coordinates. One of the first real-world uses of Tiny Geo-coder can be seen on travel.perfectspace.com, where the authors are passing their check-ins on Brightkite through Tiny Geo-coder to generate a map of their location for display on the site. Another possibility that comes immediately to mind is converting the coordinates that the iPhone version Twitterrific generates into the name of the location for your Twitter profile. I'm sure clever people will come up with some even better ideas for this little app.
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andrisi said 6:40PM on 11-11-2008
I would not be surprised if this was based on the Google Maps geocoder, or something similar. Geocoding is not something a nice guy can do alone. So it would be nice to disclose if it is so.
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todd said 10:09AM on 11-12-2008
Doesn't seem to do street addresses or even medium sized towns. Seems pretty useless beyond getting the rather generic "location" of a big city.
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Nate said 3:33AM on 11-29-2008
Andrisi, you're right, it is based on Google's geocoding service (as well as a few others). However, the beautiful thing is that I can now do it in one line of code instead of 10, no matter what language I'm (or others are) working with. That was the original point behind it.
Todd, it should be working for street addresses. If it's making a mistake, please let me know and I'll correct it (I do have the ability to override when the services I'm using are returning bad data).
BTW, we now do reverse geo-coding as well (yes, wrapping around Google's reverse geo-coding service). It takes a lat/lon pair and returns the closest address it can find.
Enjoy.
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Kedar Sahasrabudhe said 4:09AM on 1-10-2009
My Details: Date of Birth:16th November 1981,Time of Birth:13:30PM,Place of Birth:Dombivli,Maharashtra-India,Latitude: 19.12'N,Longitude:73.6'E Gender:Male Question:What Kind of Dosha exists in my natal chart and What are the remedies for the same?
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elliot said 6:12PM on 1-26-2009
For TripCart.com, we used mainly manual work to geocode 1000's of locations. Tools that return Geocodes often give the closest access road, sometimes even the city center (if the address doesn't parse). I just find the address on Google Maps, then move to where I want (like the middle of the swimming pool in a spa) and right click to get directions. That gives me the LatLong. Works every time and fast. Can do 100 / hour for perfect Geocoding.
TripCart was reviewed by downloadsquad here:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/09/19/plan-your-trips-at-tripcart/
And example of how this looks on TripCart:
http://www.tripcart.com/usa-regions/Eastern-Pennsylvania,Spas.aspx
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