Got Net?

Over at Frame Digital we've been working on a new tool to create embeddable google maps using photos from Flickr users. Its one of those often touted mashups, its designed to be easy to use and we hope it will be useful for people who can't create these sort of things themselves. Its got loads of features, such as multiple map creation (registration required) custom photo dimensions, color palettes, map size, the list goes on.

There's a few tools out there that already do this sort of thing such as mapbuilder.net and MyPicsMap, but we think MapFlickr has some different features that make it stand out. If you want to see more Google map toys, Mashable has a great list.

The best way to understand it is to use it, head over to imapflickr.com and have a play. Just remember, your photos need to have geolocation information added to them before it will work!

I'm been using the Google Maps API for a few years now on various projects. Developer nirvana is often being able to integrate different APIs to get an entire entirely different project. Like for example merging Flickr geo-located photos onto a Google Map.

Recently my company released a website allowing registered users to upload photos and videos using their online control panal to store files on Flickr and YouTube. We used the excellent Flickr.NET wrapper and Google's own .NET class library for the YouTube integration. Approval of images and videos were done using a custom CMS tool on the website allowing content editors to preview the multimedia uploads before making them visible, using calls to the respective APIs to change permissions. It worked pretty well, although uploading large video files is definitely something your average user still struggles with. You can see the end result here.

While trawling the internet trying to figure out how to implement the various API integrations I came across a website at mapaset.4bcj.com that allows you to create your own Flickr/Google Maps mashup without doing any coding at all. Its basically a clever mashup wizard. I think its part of Brett Jones blog, but there's very little information about it.

The UI could maybe do with a bit of work, but its a great idea. I really like how the application can use different ways to access your photos, such as username, email address or even the URL to your photostream. Very clever and generated results are pretty good. Here's an example of it using the code generated on the site to show a bunch of photos from recent trip to Laos.