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Coming updates for pinmaps.net
Friday, March 05, 2010 by admin
I have some great ideas that I want to move forward to give our users more tools to interact with their maps. First of all I want to offer a way to share your map pins on twitter including a short url link that will redirect to your map pont.
Twitter has become a very important tool in your the social media arsenal and I have to give the tool to share your interactive map with your followers and friend on twitter.
Second I want to create an interactive map that will allow you to add push pins in order to get the directions to one or more locations.
I hope to have these updates in the coming weeks.
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We have transfer the site to a new server
Monday, August 24, 2009 by admin
We are delighted to inform that the transfer to the new server has been completed. The new server has a lot more capacity and the site should feel more responsive and reliable. Some of the problems that we had such as login time should be fine now, but let us know if you experience otherwise. Also the refresh button on the map is working as it should now.
Thanks for your patience during this transfer.
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Printing issues resolved
Friday, April 24, 2009 by admin
I've been working lately to fix several bugs and performance related issues with the site. Most of this is under the hood, but there a some few cosmetic enhancements that has been done as well like highlighting the selected map point, the embedded little map window on the map, but the most important fix this time is that the printing function of the maps and map points alike.
When you are in map view and print it, all the markers on the map will show up as well, and the map point printing link shows the correct map.
Thank you for your patience, and let me know if there is any problem.
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Reverse Geocoding
Thursday, December 18, 2008 by admin
I have added a new cool feature to the site; reverse geocoding. I know I said I would work on the directions minitab, but I though reverse geocoding would be very useful and easy to implement. Helpful because it can be used to find the zip code or city name of a given point on the map.

Let me start to explain what it is. Geocoding is the process of converting and address into latitude / longitude so it can be pin pointed on a map. As the name suggests reverse geocoding is the oposite process of converting the latitude / longitude values in a physical address.
Reverse geocoding is not an exact science; the "geocoder" will try to find the closest addresable location within a certain tolerance. In order to help us to figure out how accurate the address is, the geocoder returns a "accuracy" value from 1 to 9 with 9 being the highest value of accuracy. What it means is that a 9 "accuracy" value is within the street level and a 4 value for intance is about the city level. You have to give it a try to find the level you want.

Now I want to explain how to use it; go to "MyMaps" and click the "Add Map Point" link on the left hand side of the menu bar and then click anywhere on the map. An infowindow will pop up with the requested information inside. Here you have the option the to add this point to your map (see example below).

reverse_geocoding.JPG

Then if you want to make another request you need to click the "Add Map Point" link again that triggers the map click event. Every time you click on the map a new push pin is created in a random color and the previous one is removed from the map.

After this update to the site now I promise I'll work on the directions minitab, if I don't get distracted with something cool in the meantime.
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New Map Interface
Friday, October 31, 2008 by admin
Some people might had been wondering if development of site had stalled because there wasn't any new features lately, but I can't assure you that I'm still very much committed to develop the site but since I'm doing this part time all by myself the pace is not as fast as I want.
So now I have totally redesigned the my maps page to make it more user friendly and and usable with all the major browsers.
Also the new page has been designed to accommodate the new features that will be coming in the next few months. As usual I'll like to hear your comments about the site and specially the new maps page.
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The web site was down on Sept 27-08
Tuesday, September 30, 2008 by admin
Due to a OS problem the web hosting service informed us that the web site would be down for about 24 hours.
We have a daily site and database back up that is done at the end of the day, but if you saved map points right before the server went down there is a possibility that they were no saved with the latest back up. Please check your maps and map points list.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

This is the official email from the hosting service: 9-27-08 (8:20 a.m.)
"The Server is currently down (keeps restarting itself) due to a problem with operating system or harddisk issue.
We have used different methods to troubleshoot but it doesn't help.
The server is being reinstalled with Windows OS.
It will take 12-24 hours to complete the process os reload and data restore.
We apologize for the inconveniences this issue may cause."


Back on business: 9-28-08 (4:15 a.m.)
OS reload on the server is done.
We are in the process of restoring data from backup.
Restore Priority: dns, websites, databases, email, ftp, stats
Currently most websites should have been up and running.
There are still a lot of work to be done.
We thank you for your patience while we're working hard to restore service.


I have set up a Twitter account to inform users if the web site is not accessible, you can find it here:
http://twitter.com/Pinmaps/
Check it out because I'll post of the progress done with the site.
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Street View Panormama
Friday, August 08, 2008 by admin
Google Maps have added a street view option to driving directions on Google Maps. Where street view is available a small camera now appears next to each step in the driving directions given by Google.

When you click on the camera a street view window appears with a blue line marking your route and a big white arrow points you in the right direction. When you arrive at a junction a message appears telling you which direction to turn.

This video from Google explains it much better
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Elevation and other Web Services
Saturday, July 26, 2008 by admin
I have completely changed the map point altitude service that was not working very well. From the user point of view nothing has changed and it works the same.
Like before you can access the service any time from the context menu. Just right click the mouse anywhere on the map and select Get Altitude to load the service.

GetAltitude1.JPG

I'm using the geonames web service, so be aware that sometimes their server might be unavailable or the response can take a while.
In the next few week I want to add a Weather service that gives you the current weather conditions from the nearest weather station when we provide the latitude and longitude to query the service. I'll talk more about it when I put it online; now I'm doing the coding and testing.
Let me know if you experience any problem with the Altitude service.

Update: The geonames Weather service has been added.
Just right click anywhere on the map and select Get Weather from the context menu.

GetWeather.jpg

Below is the resulting screen:

WeatherConditions.jpg
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The pinmaps.net blog is online
Sunday, June 01, 2008 by admin
This is the first post to make sure the blog system is functional.
It took us a little bit longer to have the blog ready than we wanted because we were looking to integrate an existing solution to the web Site, but at the end we decided to create our own blog system so we could have a much better integration with the overall look and feel of the Site. There are some nice solutions out there, but nothing beats the challenge to create your own.

We'll be using this blog to keep you informed about new developments for the site and we hope you get involve in this process and offer your own suggestions and insights. After all you as the user of the site have the best perspective of what to improve and where we should head in the future.
Please do not hesitate to give us your comments. 
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