An introduction to all the geo technologies provided by Yahoo and how to use them to solve common geo problems.

1. Yahoo Geo
Technologies Things you might not know about.
Chris&an Heilmann, Tech Talk ‐ Sunnyvale, Ca, 8/4/2010

2. Geolocation is the
new thing.

3. It is also big
business.

6. Yahoo has amazing
geo technology
products.

7. And they work
localised to outside
the US.

8. Problem is that geo
is hard-core Math.

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

11. Finding the current location.

12. Finding the current location.
Turning a location into a
place.

13. Finding the current location.
Turning a location into a
place.
Finding a geographical
hierarchy.

14. Finding the current location.
Turning a location into a
place.
Finding a geographical
hierarchy.
Geo-tagging information.

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

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

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

18. Finding the current location.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

26. Problem: none of
this works in YAP
applications.

27. Problem: none of
this works in YAP
applications.

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

29. 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...

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

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

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

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

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

35. 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
)

36. Turning a location into a place.

37. Turning a location into a place.

38. Turning a location into a place.
Whoa!!!
WOEID

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

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

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

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

43. Finding a geographical hierarchy.

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

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

46. Geo-tagging information.
h=p://developer.yahoo.com/geo/placemaker/

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

48. 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"

49. 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=""

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

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

52. Geo-tagging information.
h=p://icant.co.uk/geomaker/

53. Geo-tagging information.

54. Geo-tagging information.
Geonames ID
ISO
FIPS
INSEE
JGDC
IATA
ICAO
WOEID

55. Geo-tagging information.
Concordance

56. Geo-tagging information.
http://isithackday.com/hacks/geo/geosetta.php

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

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

59. <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=””>

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

61. Displaying geo information.

62. Displaying geo information.

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

64. Displaying geo information.
h=p://www.mapstrac&on.com/

65. Putting it all
together...
Summa summarum
http://isithackday.com/hacks/geo/yql-geo-library/

66. And the hacking
continues...
h=p://delicious.com/tag/geotoys

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