The Annotated Charlottetown

Next up in the Google Maps experimenting game is RealCharlottetown.com, an annotated map of the City of Charlottetown.

The idea is this: take a Google Map, and wrap around it a simple “tag this place” interface that lets anyone associate a geographic location with a name, some tags, a URL and a description. Think of it as “Plazes for ditches.”

RealCharlottetown.com

This is still a very, very beta-quality application, but it does work, and you’re free to tag all the places you like.

Some important things to note:

  • As described here, the Tele Atlas map layer for the Charlottetown area is somewhat out of date; you’ll notice this particularly when you’re browsing in the “hybrid” view — sometimes the roads don’t line up with the satellite imagery.
  • Still to come are things like an RSS feed of newly tagged places, XML export of all places, browsing the map by tag, etc. Stay tuned.
  • No way to edit or enhance already-tagged places yet.
  • The user interface, especially the visual indication of where you’re tagging a new place, needs some work.
  • It seems to work in Internet Explorer for Windows, but I haven’t tested extensively.

Comments welcome.

Comments

Steven Garrity's picture
Steven Garrity on October 31, 2005 - 23:45 Permalink

I’d like to see a Mediawiki extension that would allow you to tie something link this into a wiki. Linking to-and-from each map node to a page on the wiki.

Ken B.'s picture
Ken B. on November 1, 2005 - 14:39 Permalink

I think it is a good idea to use Google Maps for the bus route in Charlottetown. I’ve seen a number of cities in the US use it for their bus routes. Some have added overlays with more up to date pictures of what the city really looks like.

I have downloaded the civic addresses from the PEI provincial website: http://www.gov.pe.ca/civicaddr… and came up with the following page: http://www.PEIHomeSchool.com/m…. You may want to incorporate civic addresses in your scheme.

Google also has the means to display driving directions from point A to point B. It may not be of primary use for the intended use here but it is something worth noting.

Keep up the good work.

Rob L.'s picture
Rob L. on November 1, 2005 - 15:41 Permalink

Check out http://www.placeopedia.com/

It has the Wiki integration Steven suggested. I added Charlottetown and PEI a few weeks back.