1.
Introduction to Geo
hacking with (amongst others)
Yahoo Technology.
Chris&an Heilmann, Ignite, London, 2nd of March 2010

2.
Geolocation is the
new thing.

3.
Good news is that it
is not hard to do.

4.
In the following half
hour or so I will show
you how to solve
almost all Geo
problems using YQL.

5.
Using YQL in
JavaScript:

6.
There are a few
different ingredients
to playing with geo
location.

7.
Finding the current location.
Turning a location into a
place.
Finding a geographical
hierarchy.
Geo-tagging information.
Displaying geo information.

8.
Finding the current location.
Finding the current
location happens in
different ways.

9.
Finding the current location.
sniffing.
The creepy way - IP

10.
Finding the current location.

11.
Finding the current location.
h;p://isithackday.com/hacks/geo/js‐loca&on.html

12.
Finding the current location.
The problem with IP
sniffing is accuracy.

13.
Finding the current location.
The other problem:
it is not reliable.

14.
Finding the current location.
The non-creepy and
more accurate way -
the W3C
geolocation API.

15.
Finding the current location.
Firefox/(Mobile) Safari/Chrome (dev build)

16.
Finding the current location.
Another way is of
course to get
location
information from
the user’s social
presence.

17.
Finding the current location.
Plazes, FireEagle,
Twitter, Yahoo,
Flickr, Foursquare,
Gowalla, Brightkite,
Google Buzz/
Latitude, Dopplr...

18.
Turning a location into a place.
Having a latitude
and longitude is
fine and dandy but
it is ambiguous.

19.
Turning a location into a place.
The same lat/lon
pair could be a lot
of things - the
centre of a town, a
point of interest...

20.
Turning a location into a place.
This is why we need
to turn lat/lon into
something that is
human readable.

21.
Turning a location into a place.
This is called
reverse geocoding
and there are a few
services for it out
there.

22.
Turning a location into a place.
My personal
favourite (as it
works world-wide)
is the Flickr reverse
geocoder.

23.
Turning a location into a place.
h;p://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.places.findByLatLon.html

24.
Turning a location into a place.
You can use this
using YQL:
select * from flickr.places where
lat=51.5142271 and lon=‐0.1289602

25.
Turning a location into a place.
To get more in-
depth data, use
flickr and Yahoo
Geo:
select * from geo.places where woeid in (
select place.woeid from flickr.places
where lat=51.5142271 and lon=‐0.1289602
)

26.
Turning a location into a place.

27.
Turning a location into a place.

28.
Turning a location into a place.
Quick word on
woeid: Use it.
(Flickr, Dopplr, Twitter and Yahoo do)

29.
Finding a geographical hierarchy.
What’s around a
certain location?
h;p://developer.yahoo.com/geo/

30.
Turning a location into a place.
GeoPlanet gives
you hierarchies:
Parent, Ancestors, Children,
Siblings, Neigbours,
BelongTos.

31.
Finding a geographical hierarchy.
h;p://isithackday.com/geoplanet‐explorer/?woeid=615702

32.
Finding a geographical hierarchy.
h;p://isithackday.com/geoplanet‐explorer/geodrilldown.php

33.
Finding a geographical hierarchy.

34.
Finding the current location.
Putting it all
together, we can
get this:
h;p://isithackday.com/hacks/geo/geotest.php

35.
What if you have no
location but only a
Geo-tagging information.
resource?

36.
Geo-tagging information.
h;p://developer.yahoo.com/geo/placemaker/

37.
Placemaker takes a
text, or a web URL
Geo-tagging information.
and extracts the
geographical
information from it.

38.
select * from
Geo-tagging information.
geo.placemaker where
documentContent = "Hey I
am in Atlanta! I came here
from London and will
travel onwards to Las
Vegas and Sao Paulo" and
documentType="text/
plain"

39.
select * from geo.placemaker where
Geo-tagging information.
documentURL =
"h;p://icant.co.uk" and documentType="text/
html" and appid=""
select * from geo.placemaker where
documentURL =
"h;p://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/
newsonline_uk_edi&on/front_page/rss.xml"
and documentType="text/rss" and appid=""

40.
Placemaker returns
places and
Geo-tagging information.
references - you can
use these to
enhance texts with
geo information.

41.
To see Placemaker
in action, check out
Geo-tagging information.
the GeoMaker hack.
h;p://github.com/codepo8/geomaker

42.
Geo-tagging information.
h;p://icant.co.uk/geomaker/

43.
Displaying geo
Displaying geo information.
information is done
via Map APIs

44.
By far the easiest
Displaying geo information.
way to build a very
simple map is to
use the Google
static maps API.

45.
<img src=”h;p://maps.google.com/maps/api/
sta&cmap?
Displaying geo information.
sensor=false
&size=200x200
&maptype=roadmap
&key=YOUR_MAP_KEY
&markers=color:blue|label:1|37.4447,‐122.161
&markers=color:blue|label:2|37.3385,‐121.886
&markers=color:blue|label:3|37.3716,‐122.038
&markers=color:blue|label:4|37.7792,‐122.42”
alt=””>

46.
If you want to use
Displaying geo information.
Yahoo Maps with
the data returned
from the earlier
YQL calls here’s the
code:

47.
Displaying geo information.

48.
Displaying geo information.

49.
If you want to use
Displaying geo information.
any map provider
easily without
deep-diving into an
API, use
Mapstraction.

50.
Displaying geo information.
h;p://www.mapstrac&on.com/

51.
That’s it! You have
the tools, now find a
cause and get geo
hacking!
h;p://delicious.com/tag/geotoys

52.
Chris&an Heilmann
h;p://wait‐&ll‐i.com Cheers
h;p://developer‐evangelism.com
h;p://twi;er.com/codepo8