MapQuest Devblog

Ok, I was driving (very carefully, mind you) on a very sunny afternoon to the airport, and I got a call from my very bright and brilliant niece who recently enrolled into Michigan State University (MSU if you're a Michigan native). During the midpoint of the conversation, all I heard was "cell phone silence", for lack of a better term, and within a few more seconds the call was dropped -- argh!

Obviously, I'm not the only person in the world who gets aggravated when a mobile call gets dropped. Of course, my wireless carrier has to go unnamed here in order to protect the guilty... er, uh... innocent.

So, after I called my niece to finish our conversation, I started to think. "Shouldn't there a way to show folks where the various dead spots are for the wireless carriers?" As you will see shortly, the MapQuest 5.2 APIs actually come in quite handy for solving this sort of problem. If you read my previous blog post and tried out the example code that I provided, then you should be familiar with the concept of creating a POI (point of interest) on a map and displaying it. Today, we're going to use overlays to highlight a region of interest. Take a look at the image below to see my "dead spot" awareness system:

"Ribbit / MapQuest / Kayak Mashup" is the title of a post by Andrew Powell from Universal Mind, introducing a great hotel search app he built using APIs from (big surprise!) Kayak, Ribbit, and our very own AS3 API.

Give it a read and check out Andrew's hotel search app. We also support shameless promotion, so help Andrew win a Wii by voting for his application on the 360|Flex Contest Page.

Hi! If you're reading this, you've gotten word we have this Developer Blog. A number of thoughts might be running through your mind as you hover over the "next" button on your feed reader or "close" on this browser tab:

"MapQuest has a blog?"

"MapQuest has a Developer Blog?"

"MapQuest has Developers?"

and if you're a mash-up developer: "MapQuest has APIs?"

Yeah, yeah, we know. Over the past few years we know it seemed that on the outside MapQuest seemed a bit behind the times, a Web 1.0 giant sitting on the bench of a Web 2.0 Internet. However, inside MapQuest there have been people hard at work trying to change our culture and perspective into something that can thrive in a "Web 2.0" world. We've been changing teams, processes, some developers switched to Macs -- serious, real change.

While we've been quiet, we've also been building things. More accurately, we've been rebuilding things. Starting with the 5.0 releases, we have rebuilt much of our geospatial web services platform from the ground up. Currently at version 5.2 and with 5.3 in beta, these releases contain lots of practical things, lots of cool things, lots of helpful things. Now we're making them free things.

Developer Choice

We're happy to finally introduce the MapQuest Platform: Free Edition. We've taken nearly all the features of our platform and made them freely available to developers. We believe that Free Edition provides developers a comprehensive toolset and flexible APIs so they can build well, whatever they want. Developers can choose the programming language of their choice and the features they need to build the applications they want, the way they want.

Here's some of the Free Edition features:

• Six APIs
  • We're giving developers greater flexibility and choice by enabling them to develop in a variety of programming languages and environments, they can even mix and match:
    • Java
    • C++
    • .NET
    • JavaScript
    • AS3 (Adobe ActionScript 3: Flash, Flex, AIR)
    • Our newest API: FUJAX (Flash Under JavaScript and XML), which allows developers to write in JavaScript, yet leverage the power of Flash.
    • and of course LOLcode. Nope, sorry, still no LOLcode suport.
• A Rich Mapping Interface for creating Rich Internet Applications with our JavaScript, AS3, or FUJAX APIs:
  • Aerial Imagery and Hybrid Views - Satellite imagery and aerial photography.
  • Smart Rollovers - Rollover windows that adapt their size and positioning on the map based on the content placed in the window.
  • Smooth Zoom - Animated transitions between zoom levels.
  • Globe View - A map of the world presented as an interactive globe.
  • "Flickable" Maps - Maps that continue to pan based on speed and friction settings.
  • Advanced Shape Overlays - Build apps that allow users to create and interact with a variety of overlays on maps.
  • Advanced Map Marker Features - With "declutter mode," automatically move collided markers (POIs) to alternate positions on the map with a customizable leader line pointing back to their original location.
• Unlimited Maps - Worldwide: Standard or Tiled.
• Unlimited Geocoding - Multi-line and Single-line Geocoding, Real-time Batch Geocoding, Reverse Geocoding, Postal Code and Town Geocoding.
• Unlimited Routing - Point-to-Point, Multi-point or Optimized.
• Simplified Data Management - MapQuest offers access to simple tools to upload and manage location information to help keep websites accurate and relevant.

You'll find more information on all of this on the MapQuest Developer Network, where you can also download the code and give the Free Edition a test drive. You can also find documentation, example applications and how-to articles to reference while checking out our APIs.

Thanks!

Turn Your World Upside Down

Let's talk briefly about globes. You know, those ones that sit in libraries in period piece movies where some old guy in a leather chair sits next to it, smoking a pipe and calling Shakespeare a hack? Those globes. The ones where when you see them, you can't help but spin it as hard as you can in the slim hope the momentum will send it rolling across the room.

Well you can now create and spin your own virtual globe. We fixed a bug in the new full-axis globe view so you should now see improved performance when trying to spin it off your web page.

KML and GeoRSS Support: We got it.

Create a RemoteCollection, tell it the location of the feed and its format, and watch it get automagically sucked onto the map! And if you have another format, feel free to extend the feed loading classes to create your own loadable formats. Sorry, LOLcode support is still a no-go.

But wait, there's more!

Here's the list of other major updates in the just released 5.3rc2 Beta update of the MapQuest Platform:

• Beta Issues Forum now available - A forum for posting about Beta has been created in the Technical Resource Center.
• Old POI & Overlay Getters/Setters restored (JavaScript) - We've added back in the 5.2 getters and Setters for POIs and Overlays.
• POI & Overlay getValue & setValue methods added (JS and FUJAX) - The new getValue and setValue functions have been added to the POI and Overlay objects in FUJAX so that both the old, and the new methods of setting properties on these objects are now available in both JavaScript and FUJAX.
• Multiple Collections (JS, AS3, FUJAX) - Building on our efforts last month to combine POICollections and OverlayCollections into a single ShapeCollection, you can now add multiple ShapeCollections to a map.

Check out more information and samples on the MapQuest Developer Network Beta page.