About Blogmapper

Blogmapper^TM - map your blog and blog your map

	Major update 9/02/03 Version 0.9; Many changes:works with RSS 1,0.9x,2; new basemap catalog; change maps/blogs on the fly; use any non-progressive jpg as map, more... The old version is HERE Contents: Generate a map from a blog What is all this and why? What's a blog? What if I don't already have a blog? How do I put location information in my blog? Where to I get location information? How to map your first blog Changing maps How do I link to my mapped blog? How to share your mapped blog Technology Credits Contact us	View a mapped graffiti blog

Blogmapper requires Macromedia Flash Player 6.
Flash Player is available here

Generate a map from a blog:

Sample mapped blogs:
San Francisco Graffiti
Sites on the Washington Mall/ IKONOS satellite view
World Wide SARS Cases

Or, map your own blog:

What is all this and why?

Blogmapper lets you associate blog entries with hot spots on a map. When you click on the spots, the entries appear. View the graffiti blog and you'll see exactly what we mean. Blogmapper can be used to map and log anything anywhere, including your travels, and the places and things that interest you. Anyone with access to the web can do this - neither mapping expertise nor software installation is required. And it's free!

What's a blog?

A blog, or weblog, is a web-based journal. A few of the places where you can start blogging are Blogger, Radio Userland, and TypePad. Blogging is easy.

What if I don't already have a blog?

Consider using the Map Bureau free mapping service, which allows you to map and blog at the same time, and is compatible with Blogmapper.

How do I put location information in my blog?

You annotate your blog with location information by including text of the form:

<geo:lat>46.1</geo:lat><geo:long>124</geo:long>

in your blog posts. Needless to say, 46.1,124 are the latitude and longitude of the place on the earth's surface with which you wish to associate the post. This should normally be embedded in an element that prevents display and supplies the proper namespace: :

<geo:lat>46.1</geo:lat><geo:long>124</geo:long>

Aside for experts:If this kind of embedding is included, and the post is in XHTML, the result is well-formed XML that can be manipulated by XML processing tools (XSLT, RSS syndicators, etc). The geo:lat and geo:long tags come from the RDFIG vocabulary for geographic location. If this paragraph makes no sense to you, don't worry. Blogmapper automatically generates the right text for you as detailed in the next section.

Blogmapper can also be used to annotate images other than maps (or maps that are treated as images because their projection information is not known). In this case, posts are assigned image coordinates rather than latitude and longitude by:

<geom2d:x>200</geom2d:x><geom2d:y>-300</geom2d:y>

and in embedded form:

<geom2d:x>200</geom2d:x><geom2d:y>-300</geom2d:y>

An example: you can use blomapper to annotate a picture of a group of friends, allocating one descriptive post to each friend, and supplying the image coordinates where the friend appears.

Where to I get location information?

You can use any source you like (eg a GPS), but you can also get this information by clicking on maps in Blogmapper using its "locator" tool. Here are the details:

First start up Blogmapper. At the top of the right hand frame you will see the following buttons:

Clicking on "Select Map" presents a menu in which you can type in the URL of a map (a non-progressive jpg or an XML file in the RDFMap format), or select a map from our catalog . Once the map of your choice is present in Blogmapper we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the map navigation tools by clicking on the ? above the map.

One of the tools in the navigation bar is the "locator". It looks like this:

When this tool is selected, the coordinates of the points that you click on the map will be reported in a field just below the map in the form:

<geo:lat>46.1</geo:lat><geo:long>124</geo:long>

<geom2d:x>200</geom2d:x><geom2d:y>-300</geom2d:y>

Copying and pasting this into your blog post will associate that post with the location (your blog should be in HTML rather than TEXT edit mode for this to work properly). Hint: A quick way to select the location text on Windows is to mouse-click anywhere on the text, and then type Control A.

The button jumps the locator to the nearest location already marked on your map. This allows mulitiple posts to be associated with the same location. When that location is clicked, the list of posts associated with it is displayed in the right hand frame.

Compatability: The current version of Blogmapper continues to support the form of location text used in the earlier version. So, mapped blogs from that version will continue to work.

How to map your first blog

In order to map your blog, you need to configure your blogging software so that it generates a so-called "RSS feed" - this is a file in a standard format that Blogmapper (among other applications) can use to access your blog contents. Search your blogging tool's documentation with the keyword "RSS" to find out how to generate an RSS feed.

Note for Blogger users Only the Pro version currently generates feeds. You should set the "Descriptions" option on the "Site Feed" tab under "Settings" to "Full".

Start up both Blogmapper and your blogging software.
Select a map in Blogmapper with
Load your blog into Blogmapper: click , then supply the URL of your RSS feed to the dialog. Blogmapper only displays located posts, so initially nothing will appear.
For each post that you wish to map in your blog:

Open the post for editing
Click on the map location for the post with the locator tool.
Copy and paste the location text below the map into the post (since it won't be displayed in the blog, it doesn't matter where it appears).
Republish your blog.
Reload the blog in Blogmapper using . As soon as you reload your blog, you'll see your newly located post appear on the map.

Needless to say, you don't need to republish and reload every time you locate a post; if you locate several posts, and then l republish/reload you'll see the accumulated changes.

That's it!

Changing maps

Among the maps in our catalog, some have projections associated with them, and some do not. The projection, if any, is displayed beneath the map thumbnail in the catalog. When the current map in Blogmapper has a projection, then the location text gives latitude and longitude, and otherwise it gives image coordinates. If you stick to maps with projections, then you can freely switch between maps, and all locations will display correctly. On the other hand, when using maps without projections, Blogmapper has only image coordinates to go on, so switching maps (although possible) will lead to incorrect results. So, keep in mind that when you use a map or image without a projection, your work cannot be transferred to other maps or images.

How do I link to my mapped blog?

A URL appears at the bottom of the Blogmapper window below the map and the locator text. This URL links to the mapped blog. For example, here's the URL for the San Francisco Graffiti map.:

http://www.mapbureau.com/blogmapper/v1.php?content=http://www.blogmapper.com/outlinesf.htm&ctype=html&basemap=http://www.mapbureau.com/basemaps/sanfrancisco.0.xml

Link to this from any web page. It's best to launch the mappped blog in a new page, via

<a href = "your URL" target="_blank">Whatever</a>

because the "back" button doesn't work correctly in Blogmapper (due to Flash-HTML interaction issues).

How to share your mapped blog

We'll be putting together a gallery of mapped blogs at the Blogmapper site. If you'd like your blog to appear in the gallery (and we strongly encourage this!), send us an email at info@blogmapper.com with "add to gallery" in the subject and the URL of your mapped blog in the body. To remove it, put "remove from gallery" in the subject instead. Thanks!

What's the technology behind this?

Blogmapper uses open formats throughout. It works by first transforming the RSS feed for the blog into RDF. In this process, the location information is scraped out of the posts and added to the RDF using the RDFMap vocabulary. Then, a variant of the RDFMapper mapping engine is employed to produce the final interactive map. If you'd like more control of the process, the more general capabilities of RDFMapper might be of interest.

Credits

Chris Goad, Jason Harlan, and Donalda Speight.

What if I have bug reports, questions or suggestions?
info@blogmapper.com