jbabetski11's blog

Developer David Bello has written a great plug-in for AIM called "Share-a-Map." That clever name may have something to do with why we're covering it here.

Right from the copy in the AIM Gallery:

Share-a-map is an AOL AIM plugin that let you share maps with a friend via AIM in an interactive way. This plugin can be extremely useful when you want to share a location, route or place with a friend or relative, plus other features like add images and hand drawing overlays, find an address or point, save your map, among others.

We've been playing with it here in the office and it is a really sweet way to do some map collaboration.

Earlier this month we told you about a "Great Mashup using APIs from Ribbit, Kayak, and MapQuest" by Andrew Powell, shamelessly plugging it to help him win a Wii.

Well, not only did Andrew win the 306|Flex API Contest and the Wii, he also won some help restyling the UI.

"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.

Alltop is a site that creates category "dashboards" of "all the top" sites on the Internet in both tech and non-tech related categories. They just launched a category for programming information at http://programming.alltop.com. The MapQuest Developer Blog is among the helpful programming resources listed.

Our thanks to Alltop! Give the site a look.

This morning we released an update to the MapQuest JavaScript API. Version 5.3, Release Candidate 3 contains the following new functionality:

• Drop Shadow setting for the map: We've added a visual drop-shadow graphic to the map, that you can turn on by calling map.setMapShadowState(boolean). This shadow is off by default.
• Remote Collections: KML and GeoRSS support built into the API! Create a RemoteCollection, tell it the location of the feed and its format, and watch it get automagically sucked onto the map! If you have another format, feel free to extend the feed loading classes to create your own loadable formats.
• Min/Max Zoom levels on POIs: You can now set minimum and maximum zoom levels on POIs. The POI would then only be visible on the map between the set zoom levels.poi.setValue('minZoomLevel', x) poi.setValue('maxZoomLevel', x)
• Show Traffic Flow on the Map: You can now add traffic flow to your map. This is the first step of adding traffic functionality into the API - more will follow.
• Show Traffic/Incident POIs on the Map: You can now add traffic incident POIs to your map. This is the second step of adding traffic functionality into the API - more will follow.

Are you starting to see a pattern here?

This morning we released an update to our JavaScript API. Version 5.2.1 uses DOJO 1.0.2, which fixes a bug in the original DOJO 0.9.0 GFX library that could cause line overlays to "jump" at certain zoom levels. If you do not use overlays in the 5.2 version of the JavaScript API, you do not need to make any changes.

To update, simply change the version parameter to "v=5.2.1":
<script src="http://btilelog.access.mapquest.com/tilelog/ transaction?
transaction=script&key=YOUR_KEY_HERE&ipr=true&itk=true& v=5.2.1" type="text/javascript"></script>

Thank you Austin!

We just got back from a great couple of days at SXSW Interactive where we announced our new MapQuest Platform: Free Edition.

It was great to talk with developers and that people were excited to see us doing our part to rock Austin, TX. We also got to make a lot of new friends at the show and other events around town. We showed off a bunch of demos in the booth and in case you missed your flight or otherwise wanted to check them out further, you can currently find them here: MapQuest Platform: SXSW Demos. You can download the code samples to help you get started on your own applications from that page as well.

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.

Are you a developer who wishes that you could get rid of a server-side proxy page to bypass cross-domain browser issues?

Are you a JavaScript developer who longs to create maps that go beyond tiles and want to be entranced by the glitz and glamour that is Flash?

If you answered "yes" to either of these questions, you need to know about the latest in Internet buzzwords: FUJAX.

FUJAX is our newest API, released in our 5.2 update. It stands for: "Flash Under JavaScript and XML." Or, as Ant, our Senior Product Manager for our APIs explains (note: please read in your worst British accent):

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.