Near-this-user outside the US, please?

November 19, 2004 8:25 PM

Matt how hard would it be to add the near this user to people outside the USA? Assuming the code just uses a proximity match on zip code a similiar thing could be done with postal codes in Canada and I guess the UK.
All our non-US members, does your coutry have a similiar code?
posted by Mitheral to Feature Requests at 8:25 PM (16 comments total)

Or just allow GPS coordinates.
posted by smackfu at 8:35 PM on November 19, 2004

you can search users for the name of your nearest city if that helps...
posted by GleepGlop at 8:52 PM on November 19, 2004

GPS coordinates makes most sense, especially given us Antipodeans who barely have a need for postcodes.

Yes, just send mail to the house with two chimneys and a brown goat, New Zealand.
posted by tracicle at 12:15 AM on November 20, 2004

The coolest pony would be a world map with little clickable points on it where each member was. I know, entirely too much work, but still...
posted by Meatbomb at 12:21 AM on November 20, 2004

It's not that hard. timeistight wrote some conversion code to move it all to long/lat instead of zip, but I never got around to doing the big conversion job of all 17k users and the UI work. I'll come back to this and finish it once the current block of work is done.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:33 AM on November 20, 2004

vaguely related - what happened to geourl? they seem to have been down a while now.
posted by andrew cooke at 3:32 AM on November 20, 2004

yeah, joshua took it down ages ago due to spamming I think.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:25 AM on November 20, 2004

I assume GPS co-ords are just long/lat readings, yes?
posted by twine42 at 5:11 AM on November 20, 2004

I assume GPS co-ords are just long/lat readings, yes?

Yes, more or less, but be aware that there is a dizzying variety of ways to express longitude and latitude. It all stems from the various types of mathematical models of the globe that there are, giving us a wide array of projections in which to express what is, essentially, an x/y coordinate value. eventually, we'd have to bring all that GPS data into one global projection. Shouldn't be hard, but it can be complex.
posted by mmahaffie at 6:23 AM on November 20, 2004

Shame geourl was spammed to death, I liked it. :/
posted by dabitch at 6:24 AM on November 20, 2004

Hitmaps are nice, but not exactly what we want. Something similar maybe?
posted by MzB at 6:58 AM on November 20, 2004

in re: GeoURL -- 'yeah, joshua took it down ages ago due to spamming I think.'

We are genuinely curious why it is that when We utilize the marvelous little friend Ping-o-Matic, GeoURL is not only included in the list, it also returns an 'OK!'.

Is there any purpose in pinging our antiquated acquaintance, or is it simply a remnant floating about the Ether?
posted by .s at 7:05 AM on November 20, 2004

I was hoping he'd bring it back... I guess so was ping-o-matic.
posted by dabitch at 7:30 AM on November 20, 2004

Announcing A2B GeoLocation Support

We’ve replaced the defunct GeoURL with the new A2B Location-Based Search Engine. If you use geographical coordinates in your blog, check it out and add your site. They’re going to be adding some new features soon, so be sure to check back with them to keep up with what’s new.

posted by timeistight at 7:34 AM on November 20, 2004

I think using postal codes for smaller countries is not really necessary.
If someone is in Iceland at all, they're just about next door anyway.
Co-ordinates could work, if you can chose your co-ordinates from a map. Alternatively, i'd be fine with just mapping users in all but the biggest countries just by country.
posted by svenni at 10:35 AM on November 20, 2004

I suspect the airline industry is standardized on a single format for lat/long coordinates. That'd be the best one to use, especially as it provides a "pretty close" guesstimate for those who don't have a GPS.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:49 AM on November 20, 2004