A while back I wrote a proof of concept for a site which, at its core, allowed people to pick a location on a map. It used the long/lat for that location to see how close you were to another pre-defined point.
Recently, Kean Richmond noted that multimap now forwards to Bing maps – meaning the useful feature of it providing Latitude and Longitude coordinates for your search was lost. While there are a couple of services on the web that already supply a service to return these details, I thought the old code could be put to good use.
I created a full screen map site with a search box at the top, which allows you to search for anywhere in the world and the long/lat will be returned for that location. It’ll also drop a pin showing you the location marked. As added functionality, you can also then click and pick up the pin, and drop it somewhere else on the map. This means that if for example you are trying to get latitude and longitude for a store, and the postcode is close, but not right on your shop, you can just drag the pin and it will update the coordinates.
The site can be found at:
http://geolocate.douglasradburn.co.uk/
I’m hopefully going to make some improvements to it too. If you find it useful and want to see anything additional, please jot something in the comments.
Make the site HTML5
Update the scripts to use version 3 of the API
Ability to upload batch addresses to process – this might be a side project using Yahoo! PlaceFinder instead
Image Credit: Peter Ito
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