¶ Every time you view a map on Multimap, you can also show Local Information on that map, such as hotels, restaurants and wifi hotspots. Multimap gets the data from a variety of sources, one of which is the referrals log; so anyone that links to Multimap with an appropriate category gets a link back. Yesterday I added a weblogs category. To get your blog onto Multimap’s maps, simply add a link somewhere on your site like this:
Obviously you’ll need to replace the title, latitude and longitude with that of your blog (perhaps your house, office or just the centre of your city). You can find the latitude and longitude of any location in the Map Info box below a Multimap map. If your blog resides in the UK, you can also use a full or partial postcode like this:
- http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?pc=bn2&cat=blog&title=Clagnut
Once you’ve added the link to your blog (as a post, blogmark or button, perhaps) remember to click it so Multimap logs your site as a referrer. Your site should be added to the database within 24 hours. Feel free to use these images on your blog, but please download them to your server first:
Comments
1
that is just about the coolest thing i’ve ever seen.
2
Entirely pointless, but still pretty cool.
How did you convince Multimap that a Weblog category would be a good thing to offer – I can’t imagine it’s uppermost in their minds as a useful addition to their service?
3
That’s a really cool feature, Richard. I’ve added a link to the sidebar of my home page to see what happens.
On an unrelated note, I am visiting England from the 7th – 11th Sept to see family. Are there any interesting web meetups/events happening in the South East around then?
4
I disagree, Matthew. Anything that drives business Multimap’s way, even gimmicky stuff, is good for their business. It wasn’t until Richard encouraged me to visit Multimap again that I realized they had upped the quality of their service considerably – particularly the detail level available in the maps. Now Multimap is my web map of choice.
5
Matthew – as a blogger, it was uppermost in my mind so I added it myself! I suppose it may get taken away by Da Management but I doubt it, cos it’s spreading the word about Multimap and sending some more traffic.
6
Thanks for that service.
I’ve tried to find on the site a page giving the meaning of the icons on the map, but didn’t succeed. Do you have this info somewhere on the site ?
7
Good idea Richard, multimap is the way to go so much faster and cleaner with standards complaince! This is my choice of webmap over whereis.com.au
8
Pointless? Why so?
Point1: As already mentioned, its driving new visitors the site and spreading the word about multimap – a great service btw rich :-)
Point 2: As a blogger, it great to be able to link up with other bloggers in my local area.
BTW Rich, the italics in the comment box on the right is quite tricky to read and spot typos :-( How about a checkbox to change the font?
9
Italics? What italics? Perhaps my specifying Lucida is causing a problem – scroll down a bit and choose Microsoft or Vera from the ‘Switch typefaces’ box.
10
Thanks for setting this up – with http://geourl.org down, I’ve missed my occasional geo-wanders to find nearby weblogs. Let’s hope folk pick up on it enough to make it useful.
One thing – using a full UK postcode can lead to slightly unnerving maps. My address is on the web anyway but others might not be keen to give out such precise directions to their front door!
11
I think this is pretty neato too. Recently I’ve noticed a couple of people wishing for more geographical info on the web. I know it’s world-wide, but people aren’t so much – if I’m looking, say, for a website that sells headphones, I might prefer one from the UK so that I won’t have to pay for trans-Atlantic delivery.
This type of info could be read by google, enabling people to specify searches based on location. Tieing it into a great service like Multimap helps, I think, because within a click, people can have a map showing them where something is.
For the blog category specifically… well, it’s generating Multimap interest in the influential blogosphere, which is good for Multimap. But it also provides a standard, pretty feature-rich (one click to a good map) way for bloggers to say “here I am” – much as an Amazon wishlist provides a standard, pretty feature-rich (Amazon info) way to say “I like this”.
12
You’re right Jack, UK postcodes are extremely precise (in fact only Holland has a system anywhere close). However, as in my example you can specify a partial postcode (BA1, EC1N, EH8, etc) )to keep it a little more vague. You could also use lat and lon coordinates rounded up a little to reduce the precision.
It’s also worth noting we’re looking into scraping
geo.positionandICBMmeta tags (currently in about 0.5% of blogs by our estimates).13
Thanks for this!
There’s just one small suggestion-if possible edit your examples to:
http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?lat=50.8183&lon=-0.1106&cat=blog&title=Clagnut
http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?pc=bn2&cat=blog&title=Clagnut
and they could pass validation…
14
Marko – thanks for that. I thought it more straight forward to say what the actual URLs are, rather than tell people how to encode them for their chosen language.
15
Its also worth noting were looking into scraping geo.position and ICBM meta tags
That would certainly help kickstart Multimap’s weblog integration – I’m guessing 0.5% of weblogs is still quite a number.
It’ll be interesting to see how a general audience react to finding weblogs listed as a resource alongside the other categories, and how useful they’ll find them. As far as my site goes, there’s a lot of fairly useful information for someone visiting Glasgow, but it’s buried in the archives – perhaps encouraging webloggers who opt in to redirect folk clicking through from Multimap to a page of location-specific posts, or to implement a Google Hilite-style welcome text would be a good idea.
Anyway, I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for updates on the scheme’s progress – will you be collecting feedback from users/tracking their use of the new category and posting it here?
16
In Multimap’s ‘Local Information’ box, when I select, say, ‘Hotels’, numbered circles are overlayed onto the map as clickable links.
Is that going to happen for weblogs, too?
PS The Clagnut ‘Comments’ box is displayed in an ‘upright’ typeface in Firefox/WinXP Pro, but I noticed last night that it is indeed italicised in Firefox/WinMe. Something to check?
17
Yes. We’re grinding through the referrals at the moment so you should appear over the weekend.
18
Nice stuff, but it’s a shame it doesn’t use the ICBM or geo tags from a blog automatically like GeoURL used to.
19
Mine’s up! : ) Check here
Thanks again, as there’s difficult to find proper online map of Croatia. Now everyone can see where i live. Kudos!
20
Watch this space Jim – we’re testing something along those line at the moment.
21
One little niggling thing.
You use the catalog of blog in your example.
Yet the site has the catalog as Weblog.
Shouldn’t that be the catalog?
And I agree with Marko. Make your links more valid using & or & to replace the &.
22
Great to see you took our idea of UKBloggers to the next level and made it part of Multimap Local Info, Rich. Web standards, blogs… When will Multimap be putting up SVG maps on the public site?
23
I like the idea, but why not let people just use their website address and extract the same coordinate information that geourl uses? A slight step towards standard location information wouldn’t be a bad thing.
24
As I wrote before the links are just fine as they are – I have presented the URLs as they should be, leaving it up to you lovely coders to encode them as befits their purpose.
25
Because only 0.5% of blogs carry latitude and longitude in their meta tags.
26
I think you know the answer to that, Ed :-) (Data providers don’t like us displaying vector data – they think it’s too easy to steal)
27
I’m always interested in things like this that enhance the web. I’ve been playing with various semantic features on my site. I added a button for Multimap, but it doesn’t seem to be storing my weblog location. Have I got it wrong?
28
Steve – the crawler is taking quite a while at the moment (we’re working on it). Your site is in the list to be added – should happen sometime tonight.
29
Nice! Have adedd to my site – so I expect the people fed up with my rants to be calling tonight with the basball bats!
30
Nice Site. Will be adding it to one of my sites.
31
Personal blog including poetry and random thoughts.
32
Saw this blog a couple of weeks ago and was interested. 2 questions, most important one first – looking at Clagnut’s map, are Chadbourne Close and Bowring Way actually not connected? OK, maybe not so important.
The other question … I gather from your blog that you work at Multimap: I love the idea of a ‘pin’ for the map, but what I really want is to be able to have a map on my site (of, say, the whole country, although you would be able to zoom in to certain areas & the pins would still be there) that has a whole bunch of pins. As you mouseover each pin a text box tells about it. That way, I can critique each place I’ve been, using a map as the base.
Thoughts?
33
Steve – Multimap provides the sort of map service you’re after, but it’s a pay-for service. See the business services area for more info.
34
Hi Clagnut, I put the “post your blog on the map” posting on my blog : http://bloggerme.co.uk.. Something weird is happening. When you search Multimap in google I came out as the first result for about a week.
35
This multimap thing sounds real neat. I’m going to put it on my blog and see what happens.
36
Rich, I added and clicked my links last night, but there doesn’t seem to be an update on mm.
Do I need to specify the magnification, or anything else for that matter, in the link too?
37
I want to try this. I have a book and a message board out their. This may just be right for the site. Nice going
38
Congratulations! I have installed the link on my blog – Thinking Home Business http://www.thinkinghomebusiness.com and have blogged there about it
DesGold Coast/Tweed Coast Australia
39
Its its on my side bar.
Muchos thanks for a good gimmick.
40
Student at http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk
41
Heres my blog its about creative journalism
42
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I am fashion graphic designer from Dubai
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