Profile Locations

December 22, 2005 3:54 PM

I updated the userpage location stuff. If you haven't noticed, you can now add your latitude/longitude anywhere on earth (not just the US), though I started by converting everyone over from zip codes. I also figured out sorting nearby users by zipcode, and now I'm showing the closest 50 people, along with a google map.

It works great in most cities. Seattle and Boston have a nice layout. SF and NYC are less than perfect because everyone in the same zip code got the same exact location, so points stack up. LA is the worst in that regard. The zoom level of the google map depends on how many people are near you, NYC gets zoomed in, while people in the sticks get zoomed out.
posted by mathowie to feature requests at 3:54 PM (109 comments total)

Eee! I love it!

*plays*
posted by frykitty at 3:55 PM on December 22, 2005

Wow, awesome. Very nice.
posted by splatta at 3:55 PM on December 22, 2005

I go to my user page, and it renders (at least as far as my "What's the deal with your nickname" text), but then IE pops up an error box:

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://www.metafilter.com/user/7418.

Operation aborted

[OK]

That's, uh, that's kind of a problem. I click OK and it sends me to a stock "Cannot find server...The page cannot be displayed".

Happens with other folks' userpages as well. IE 6.02x, XP Pro SP2.
posted by cortex at 3:59 PM on December 22, 2005

(Implicit query: is this metafilter, or is it something nasty with my corporate net filter?)
posted by cortex at 4:00 PM on December 22, 2005

hmm, I get the same thing in IE7b1 on XP. I think there's an outside reference that is 404ing. It loads the image of the map for me, with points on it, then dies.
posted by mathowie at 4:02 PM on December 22, 2005

That's very cool. I wonder if there's a good/easy way to include people who live a bit farther (at least on the map)? Or, is there a nationwide map of users/list of users by zipcode?
posted by JMOZ at 4:03 PM on December 22, 2005

I'll work on it more tonight, I'm not sure what is killing IE.
posted by mathowie at 4:04 PM on December 22, 2005

JMOZ, I'm capping nearby users at 50 for the moment because the map bogs down with more users plotted than that. Once I find a good solution to sending 4k user locations to a browser, I'll try some of that kind of stuff.
posted by mathowie at 4:06 PM on December 22, 2005

Added, you rock.

If I may make a suggestion, and this to attempt to counteract a failing of Google's maps, changing the icon 'pin' to a different image would be nice. If two people are shown on a map and their locations are very close together, it's impossible to click on the one behind.

I know it's possible to change the pin, I've done it myself but would have to re-research the method of doing so. On the other hand, if two people are -exactly- in the same spot it's an unfixable problem.
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:07 PM on December 22, 2005

And no problems with it on Firefox 1.0 on Ubuntu 'Breezy' or Debian.
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:08 PM on December 22, 2005

Weird. There's no map on mine. Is that a bug? Sure, MeFi thinks there are no other users near me, but is that alone reason to deny me the stark, windswept beauty of a single map flag standing bravely upright in the wintry mapscape, like a tree in a Tom Thompson painting?

this unnecessary Group of Seven reference brought to you by the Society Of Ridiculously Trivial American-Canadian Realist Art Promotion
posted by arto at 4:11 PM on December 22, 2005

Great feature!

No neighbours for me yet. Hopefully soon.
posted by C.Batt at 4:11 PM on December 22, 2005

mathowie: Might take a look at the source of a Frappr map for that. I created a many-user map here and they have a two stage 100-or-all method to handle large numbers 606 pins on my map works pretty quick.
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:12 PM on December 22, 2005

Scratch that, they changed it...100+50+50+50...and so on.
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:13 PM on December 22, 2005

And regarding this, Geocoder.ca does Canadian addresses very well.
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:18 PM on December 22, 2005

I keep getting this error when I attempt to make any changes to my preferences:

The web site you are accessing has experienced an unexpected error.
Please contact the website administrator.

The following information is meant for the website developer for debugging purposes.
Error Occurred While Processing Request
Error Executing Database Query.
[Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver][SQLServer]Line 26: Incorrect syntax near '='.

Repeatable in Safari, Firefox and IE 5, all on a Mac.
posted by letitrain at 4:19 PM on December 22, 2005

Pony pony pony pony pony!

This is great. I'd love a zoom-out and zoom-around capability, too, so as to be able to see where people are in other parts of the Metaverse.
posted by killdevil at 4:20 PM on December 22, 2005

cool. thanks matt.
posted by crunchland at 4:22 PM on December 22, 2005

Is this working for anybody in IE?

And it works fine at home, Firefox.

And it is awesome by the way.

A lot more people near me than pins visible, though -- is that because of people with identical zipcodes and hence overlapping pins? Maybe I'll put in my precise long/lat and see what happens.
posted by cortex at 4:23 PM on December 22, 2005

Put in my long/lat, and I have snuck over to my proper place near PSU. So that's good; no longer standing on the exact same spot as the other 97201ers.
posted by cortex at 4:28 PM on December 22, 2005

In Firefox, for me, when I click on the little icons, a blank page pops up. When I close the blank page, the icon is selected, but the blank page pop up is annoying. This is on a Mac.
posted by interrobang at 4:32 PM on December 22, 2005

I get the same error as letitrain.
posted by cillit bang at 4:33 PM on December 22, 2005

the letitrain error should be fixed now.
posted by mathowie at 4:35 PM on December 22, 2005

Weird. Not only is the map showing only one Los Angeles resident at a time, everyone shows up as a resident of Lomita. I initially thought the problem might lie solely with geocoder; it seems to give the same lat/lon coordinates for every zip code in Los Angeles, and yet gives different coordinates when a search is done by street address. However, entering the coordinates from a more exact address search into my profile still gave the same result on the map as before.

It would seem then that both geocoder and this map feature are broken regarding LA addresses. :(
posted by the_bone at 4:38 PM on December 22, 2005

I put in my proper longitude & latitude to get my own little spot on the Boston-area map. Now if I ever flip out and have a public meltdown, fellow users will know where to send the flowers flaming bags of poo.
posted by Marit at 4:39 PM on December 22, 2005

Is there some place to find your 'tudes online by punching in your address?
posted by dobbs at 4:40 PM on December 22, 2005

the_bone: it might be a stronger case of the problem I was having -- enough LA users live in the same zipcode as you (50+) that they're all showing on the same zipcode-default spot on the map.
posted by cortex at 4:41 PM on December 22, 2005

Terraserver will give you lat/long.
posted by cortex at 4:41 PM on December 22, 2005

OK, my real location is now showing up on the map. Odd. However, the problem with geocoder remains; LA residents may want to put in more exact coordinates in order to not get "stacked" onto one point in Lomita.
posted by the_bone at 4:42 PM on December 22, 2005

This is pretty cool except that I am like 40 miles away from where I should be and there are six other people who, judging from the map, live in my house. :(
posted by Optimus Chyme at 4:42 PM on December 22, 2005

the letitrain error should be fixed now.

That was fast. Yes, it's fixed.
posted by letitrain at 4:44 PM on December 22, 2005

signal! get your backside moving. i'm all alone!
posted by andrew cooke at 4:44 PM on December 22, 2005

You can get the coordinates for anywhere in the world with local.google.com. Just browse/map/zoom-in to whatever you want, then click on "Link to this page" in the top right.

The first two numbers in the URL will be your decimal latitude and longitude.
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:46 PM on December 22, 2005

cortex: yeah, I think you're right. That being said, if people are using geocoder to search for their zip code instead of their physical address, they're still going to get an incorrect result returned from that program, which will place them on an incorrect point on the map if they enter those coordinates into their MeFi profile.
posted by the_bone at 4:47 PM on December 22, 2005

couldn't i have a map all to myself anyway?! :oP
posted by andrew cooke at 4:48 PM on December 22, 2005

If anyone has any clue why it is dying on IE/windows, lemme know?

I based the page off this one, which works fine in IE. I'm using the same scripts, same formating, but something's definitely killing IE.
posted by mathowie at 4:48 PM on December 22, 2005

This is pretty cool except that I am like 40 miles away from where I should be and there are six other people who, judging from the map, live in my house. :(

Damnable zipcodes! Today, you have earned a new enemy!

How can we exhort folks to put in their lat/long? How? We must do it for science!
posted by cortex at 4:49 PM on December 22, 2005

the_bone: ah, okay. I understand now.
posted by cortex at 4:49 PM on December 22, 2005

Is there any way the user could show up alongside his neighbors on the map on the profile page? Maybe offset with a different-colored pin? That way even people who have no one near them (like andrew cooke) could still have a map showing people where they are. Just a thought.
posted by Gator at 4:54 PM on December 22, 2005

Nice! Very slick, Matt.
posted by Robot Johnny at 5:00 PM on December 22, 2005

Yay, happy pony!

I am heartened to see that half the people in Philly are also from South Philly.
posted by kalimac at 5:26 PM on December 22, 2005

Ooh, I like this. Thanks, Matt!

For my fellow UKers, Streetmap does a good job of turning a postcode into lat/long - there's a link to 'convert/measure coordinates' at the very bottom-right of the page when it's displaying a map.
posted by terpsichoria at 5:27 PM on December 22, 2005

There are no other MetaFilter members nearby, sorry.

Probably just as well.
posted by dash_slot- at 5:33 PM on December 22, 2005

So, if There are no other MetaFilter members nearby, sorry, then it doesn't display a map at all? :(
posted by dash_slot- at 5:35 PM on December 22, 2005

This is a really cool feature, but could the map graphic be, um, a bit smaller? Horizontal scrollbars suck.
posted by majick at 5:58 PM on December 22, 2005

Solid. Thanks again.
posted by Alt F4 at 6:07 PM on December 22, 2005

So, if There are no other MetaFilter members nearby, sorry, then it doesn't display a map at all? :(

Same here.

Also, on Firefox 1.5, Windows XP SP2, most of the time if I click on one of those little map pushpins for someone who does have a map, it opens a new, blank tab. But not every time.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:07 PM on December 22, 2005

Jessamyn still doesn't show up on my map of neighbors. FauxScot does even though he is technically further from me than Jessamyn is.

Also the list below the map shows at least two user who aren't on the map above. And it much further to Hanover, NH than 36 miles (more like 60) from Montpelier, and it is 37 miles from Montpelier to Bethel (Jessamyn's city), but the folks in Hanover are showing as being 36 miles.

Maybe it's because we are "in the sticks" ;)

Perhaps part of the problem may be with people's latitude/longitude being set originally by Matt by zipcode. And that some people (including jessamyn, I am assuming) being reluctant to update their latitude/longitude information for fear of losing their fancy CSS pages.

I love this feature though. Thanks.
posted by terrapin at 6:12 PM on December 22, 2005

This is sooooo sweet! But it looks like there won't be a well attended Stockholm meet up anytime soon.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 6:20 PM on December 22, 2005

Matt, I'm using Moz 1.7.3 and my user page shows a big ugly error box reading:

The web site you are accessing has experienced an unexpected error.
Please contact the website administrator.

Error Occurred While Processing Request
1.0000000000000002 must be within range: ( -1 : 1 )

Resources:

* Enable Robust Exception Information to provide greater detail about the source of errors. In the Administrator, click Debugging & Logging > Debugging Settings, and select the Robust Exception Information option.
* Check the ColdFusion documentation to verify that you are using the correct syntax.
* Search the Knowledge Base to find a solution to your problem.

Browser Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910
Remote Address 205.209.84.201
Referrer http://metatalk.metafilter.com/
Date/Time 22-Dec-05 06:26 PM
posted by anastasiav at 6:27 PM on December 22, 2005

I seem to have the same setup as stavros (Firefox 1.5, WinXP SP2) and, for whatever it's worth, I am not having any problems with new tabs or anything else.

I am enjoying the heck out of this, though. Finally we got a pony for Christmas!
posted by booksandlibretti at 6:42 PM on December 22, 2005

That terraserver thing is a wee bit creepy. I can zoom in to see that I was home when the aerial photo was taken.
posted by goatdog at 6:46 PM on December 22, 2005

mwah, it doesn't work for everybody.

clicking on selfnoise's profile, I get a CF error:

The web site you are accessing has experienced an unexpected error.
Please contact the website administrator.

The following information is meant for the website developer for debugging purposes.
Error Occurred While Processing Request
1.0000000000000002 must be within range: ( -1 : 1 )
posted by killdevil at 6:48 PM on December 22, 2005

This is sooooo sweet! But it looks like there won't be a well attended Stockholm meet up anytime soon.

I'll be there in spirit, soundsofsuburbia.

*cranks some Tages*
posted by jonmc at 7:05 PM on December 22, 2005

This might be nice when the kinks are ironed out (okay, the one big kink that means IE users can't open their own user pages at all). Please take it down until it's fixed, mmmkay?
posted by yhbc at 7:10 PM on December 22, 2005

weird the people in Maine worked earlier today. Maybe someone has some bizarre long/lat that causes the math function to hit infinity.
posted by mathowie at 7:15 PM on December 22, 2005

Damnable zipcodes! Today, you have earned a new enemy!
posted by cortex at 4:49 PM PST on December 22

>:(

But seriously, not only are a few of us showing up in the wrong zipcode area, we're barely in the right country. It's still a way cool idea.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 7:27 PM on December 22, 2005

Ok, I turned off the google maps for now. I'll do some more tweaking and see if I can work them back in soon.
posted by mathowie at 7:38 PM on December 22, 2005

Doesn't work for me, get the CF error. XP Pro/IE6.

I've added the Lat and Long into my profile but can't get them to take into the correct fields.
posted by geekyguy at 7:39 PM on December 22, 2005

I don't see any maps at all. FF 1.0.something.
posted by kenko at 7:55 PM on December 22, 2005

Ah, duh, matt turned them off.
posted by kenko at 7:57 PM on December 22, 2005

Bravo! Thanks Matt, this is great.

Pony: I think it would be nice to have the "Users Near You" simply sorted in a single column, as it was before, with headers...like this:

50 MetaFilter users nearest this user (179 total nearby users):

0 miles
clgregor
1 miles
Jart
beezy
2 miles
eljuanbobo
topherbecker
etc, etc...

Or 5 columns for 5 different mile 'categories'?
posted by pithy comment at 8:17 PM on December 22, 2005

Earlier submitted bug description regarding Seattle coordinates here.
posted by matildaben at 8:44 PM on December 22, 2005

"There are no other MetaFilter members nearby, sorry."

Stavros must be in Busan? Drat.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 10:04 PM on December 22, 2005

Cripes.

There are no other MetaFilter members nearby, sorry.

Looks like everyone moved, once they found out that I'd been let in.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 10:04 PM on December 22, 2005

I saw that before you posted this- awesome, Matt!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:06 PM on December 22, 2005 [1 favorite]

pithy comment's idea ++good. Logrithmic scale.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:39 PM on December 22, 2005

Shit, I live how close to fishfucker? No Sacto meetup anytime soon, looks like -- not when we could all fit in one booth.

Also, has it been mentioned that selfnoise's page is throwing CFM errors? ("1.0000000000000002 must be within range: ( -1 : 1 )" -- so damned close, too)
posted by Ogre Lawless at 11:30 PM on December 22, 2005

Maybe it could always show the closest at least, wherever that might be? It would be kind of cool to know that the closest MeFite is a 1000 miles away.
posted by keijo at 12:18 AM on December 23, 2005

Stavros must be in Busan? Drat.

Gwangyang.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:40 AM on December 23, 2005

Nobody near me yet (in Dublin)... Boo!
posted by antifuse at 2:57 AM on December 23, 2005

is it broken?
posted by andrew cooke at 3:05 AM on December 23, 2005

There are no other MetaFilter members nearby, sorry.

Lonely, this Christmas, lonely and cold.
posted by biffa at 3:08 AM on December 23, 2005

I don't know if it's just me (techilliterate) or the fact that I'm using IE but I can't for the life of me find where in my profile page I add Lat/Long?
posted by Wilder at 3:14 AM on December 23, 2005

Ummm... My Profile->Customize (at the bottom)... Lat/Long is just above Occupation
posted by antifuse at 3:21 AM on December 23, 2005

Thanks, mathowie, awesome.

couldn't i have a map all to myself anyway?! :oP
posted by andrew cooke at 4:48 PM PST on December 22 [!]

(the following suggestion made not having seen how the maps appeared on the page...)

How about if there's noone close by zooming out until you at least have one other person on your map? Andrew would probably eventually make it onto my radar: being a mere 1,416 miles away, he's my only hope, unless Togo turns up here.
posted by penguin pie at 3:57 AM on December 23, 2005

Add another vote for showing the next closest user, no matter how far away...
posted by benzo8 at 5:51 AM on December 23, 2005

Ok, I turned off the google maps for now. I'll do some more tweaking and see if I can work them back in soon.

Matt. Step away from your computer and don't work on this again until at least Tuesday. Have a wonderful holiday weekend with your beautiful family in your fine new home.

Know that we are all very grateful for everything you do for us.
posted by anastasiav at 6:18 AM on December 23, 2005

I see no maps in FireFox.
posted by plinth at 6:27 AM on December 23, 2005

anastasiav - you are so not a geek. the man is having fun.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:34 AM on December 23, 2005

pssst, plinth
posted by terrapin at 7:01 AM on December 23, 2005

anastasiav: "Matt. Step away from your computer and don't work on this again until at least Tuesday. Have a wonderful holiday weekend with your beautiful family in your fine new home."

*holds a hand over anastasiav's mouth*

It's not a holiday if you don't get to do what you enjoy doing. Family schmamily.
posted by Plutor at 7:39 AM on December 23, 2005

Thanks.
posted by Mitheral at 7:42 AM on December 23, 2005

Can you put more users back? I like being able to find all the New Yorkers, not just the ones who live in Brooklyn.
posted by dame at 7:47 AM on December 23, 2005

This is fantastic!!

You know what would be cool? The ability to set thresholds for distance (like dating sites) so that someone like me, way out in the "sticks" could see everyone within 100 miles (etc).
posted by Quartermass at 8:53 AM on December 23, 2005

Using Google Earth I was able to determine the exact lat/long of not only my apartment building but the actual room in my apartment I usually sit in while using the computer. If you need lat/long, Google Earth is what you want.
posted by kindall at 9:11 AM on December 23, 2005

I am about to cry - what am I doing wrong? On my profile page all I see is a now-shortened list of users near me, that's it. Is there some sort of map I should be seeing? I feel like more of an idiot than usual.
posted by tristeza at 9:23 AM on December 23, 2005

tristeza: You need to read the previous comments more comprehensively.
posted by Kickstart70 at 9:49 AM on December 23, 2005

Thanks for the snark - I did read them and must have missed it in the 87 comments. I'll go re-read, thanks.
posted by tristeza at 9:50 AM on December 23, 2005

Yeah, you must have. Repeatedly.
posted by soyjoy at 9:54 AM on December 23, 2005

Nice - thanks number one.
posted by exogenous at 10:02 AM on December 23, 2005

I've got two users nearby, but I don't see a map

Firefox 1.0.7, Fedora Core 4

Is there anything I should be doing to make this work?
posted by ChrisR at 10:16 AM on December 23, 2005

/me (on preview (or lack thereof)) says: "argh".

Sorry about the miss :)
posted by ChrisR at 10:32 AM on December 23, 2005

What mathowie said a while back:
Ok, I turned off the google maps for now. I'll do some more tweaking and see if I can work them back in soon.

No scrolling or sniping necessary. :^)
posted by deborah at 11:12 AM on December 23, 2005

matt, this is nice. thank you very much.

i changed my lat/long using this to find the lat/long of my house.
posted by 3.2.3 at 12:15 PM on December 23, 2005

A suggestion: hook in the Yahoo geocoding API into the user preferences page.

Also, are you using a geospatial/spherical distance formula that uses an acos, like so? The accuracy is markedly better when you use this formula, combined with high-precision doubles instead of floats.
posted by maschnitz at 1:44 PM on December 23, 2005

dastardly trick getting me to enter my lat & long so you could wipe my legacy iframe-d profile. grrrr.

neat feature though.
posted by juv3nal at 2:16 PM on December 23, 2005

Ok, can someone tell me how one compels Google Earth to provide lat/long in the decimal format needed by the preferences page? It's giving me a location in degrees, inches, and radians (or whatever those units are). Eg, 37°45'59.89"N.
posted by whir at 4:10 PM on December 23, 2005

Those are called minutes and seconds. Use this form to convert.
posted by cillit bang at 4:23 PM on December 23, 2005

Oh and if the coordinates are W or S, you enter that in MeFi by using a negative number.
posted by cillit bang at 4:25 PM on December 23, 2005

There's a setting in Google Earth's preferences for whether it uses degrees/minutes/seconds or fractional (decimal) degrees.
posted by kindall at 8:32 PM on December 23, 2005

This is great. Looking forward to getting the maps back up as I missed the chance to see them before. Very few London based Mefites at the moment. Hopefully more will add their coordinates later on.
posted by MrMustard at 12:37 PM on December 24, 2005

I'll bet you a hundred simoleons the problem lies with IE's screwy XML parsing. I had the same problem when I was working with some AJAX stuff. If you want, I can probably fix it for you.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:25 PM on December 24, 2005

andrew cooke writes 'signal! get your backside moving. i'm all alone!'

Huevón, I did my frackin' homework, and I still get "There are no other MetaFilter members nearby, sorry."
posted by signal at 8:53 AM on December 25, 2005

(frirend of mine goes to the states, is asked "how do you say "dude" in spanish?", thinks a while, and replies "huevon". few days later, he's about to give a talk. same person gets up to introduce him "blah, blah ... and finally, what more can i say about rafael except that he's a great huevon".
plop!)

anyway - matt. is this a bug? i changed my latitude to -33.001 and it stil said i was all alone. is your code making nasty northern-hemisphere imperialist assumptions?
posted by andrew cooke at 3:06 AM on December 26, 2005

If you could talk to people online discussing some commonly interested topics, why do you need to know where others are actually located?
Well, I agree it's an interesting feature still.
posted by squ1rr3l at 5:30 AM on December 26, 2005

Mmmmkay, I've stopped myself from posting this several times, this time I've failed.

I would suggest to all that you limit your lat/long values to just hundreths of a degree precision instead of the 5-7 digits beyond the decimal point that seems to be the rage. This because of Good Old Paranoia: 2 digits (33.12) gets you within a couple hundred feet, 3 digits (33.123) gets you to your building, and 4 digits (33.1234) is even more precise (but probably not accurate, but that's another story). Beyond 4 is just silly anyway.

Do you want someone stalking you based on your MeFi profile? Because right now, for nearly all of you who have posted your actual lat/long, we all know exactly where you live. Fudge it a little by chopping the number down to hundredths precision, thus putting the stalker in your neighborhood somewhere instead of your doorstep.

Oh, and I'd like the map back -- never got a chance to see it before Matt disabled it. Not that it matters, everyone near me seems to live at the post office :)
posted by intermod at 9:39 PM on January 2, 2006

Your math is a bit off. At the equator, a degree is 69 miles, and change, square. The distance longitudinally scales with the cosine of the latitude. So at average, say, American latitudes, a degree is 69 * cos 40deg =~ 52.9 miles along its shortest side.

This means:
- a tenth of a degree is 5.29 miles
- a hundredth of a degree is 0.529 miles (around 2800 feet)
- a thousandth of a degree is 0.0529 miles (around 280 feet)
- a ten thousandth of a degree is 0.00529 miles (around 28 feet)

And that's the short side. The long side is more like 37 feet.

So, thee digits is about the accuracy of an acre lot or two. Four digits is about the accuracy of the size of a small house, or a part of an apartment building.

All that said, I couldn't agree with you more. Sticking anything more than three digits is overkill. I'd suggest to Matt that he round off the display to 3 digits just to protect people's privacy.
posted by maschnitz at 11:30 PM on January 4, 2006

Precision is not the same as accuracy. I like my privacy, but I also want Mefites to have some idea of where I live, so I just chose the closest intersection as my location. It's close enough, and the fudge factor is entirely under my control. Forcing inaccuracy through imprecision is a heavy-handed and unnecessary solution. We're all adults here (or close enough), and the information is voluntarily self-reported, so I see no reason to cripple the map feature "for our own good." Each and every one of can take care of our own privacy in this case, if we so wish.
posted by skoosh at 5:55 AM on January 17, 2006