Forum: General Topics

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Subject:Live Links 

amohan

8:20
Sunday
24-Aug-2008

Please explain the usage of Livelinks, an example would really help !

Thanks !
 

Stephen

10:45
Sunday
24-Aug-2008

Location:
Surrey, UK

Phone Model:
BB 9800 Torch
BlackBerry 8900
SE W910i
Nokia 5800

A Livelink is an image or text box that can be embedded into a separate website, for displaying live data from TMJ. For example, it allows you to display a map of your current location within a blog, etc. (Note that the maps are sourced from OpenStreetMap, so India might have the same map coverage problems as discussed in the 'Map for India' thread).

 

amohan

10:48
Monday
25-Aug-2008

Thanks Stephen,

Its there any way to use Google Maps with the live tracking data being generated by your mobile software ? Basically I want to show my present location via tinyurl.com along with my twitter messages.

 

Stephen

17:43
Tuesday
26-Aug-2008

Location:
Surrey, UK

Phone Model:
BB 9800 Torch
BlackBerry 8900
SE W910i
Nokia 5800

No, I'm afraid the embedded livelink images are limited to OSM maps. Its possible that I could create a Google Earth livelink which would allow you to put a link on your site which when clicked would show your location in Google Earth, but this would rely on the user having that already installed, so may not be ideal...?
 

amohan

18:01
Tuesday
26-Aug-2008

Stephen,

But I thought maps.goole.com would be free. I've seen people using these links http://tinyurl.com/5k9jgh to show thier position while posting at twitter.com. Check the link, its simple code that could be generated on your site and by using tinyurl.com service I too could use a similar link to make position visible on google maps.

Do let me know what u think.

Thanks
Atul
 

Stephen

18:19
Tuesday
26-Aug-2008

Location:
Surrey, UK

Phone Model:
BB 9800 Torch
BlackBerry 8900
SE W910i
Nokia 5800

Are you happy if the link is 'static' - ie, it justs opens up google maps in a new window showing your current position at that moment (though the map wouldn't then continually update to show you moving along the street)?

eg:
View Location in Google Maps

If thats all you need then, yes I guess this should be pretty easy to add to the 'Text' livelinks. Are you able to add an <iframe> element to your tinyurl.com site?
 

amohan

18:42
Tuesday
26-Aug-2008

Yeah, that would be perfect. And if the link is pointing to your site that in any case would have my current location through GPS updated so who ever clicks on the link would have my given location at that given time. Cool

About <iframe> being supported in tinyurl, well I really don't know we could google it to find out if they indeed support inline frames ?

Thanks for your quick response.
 

Stephen

20:19
Tuesday
26-Aug-2008

Location:
Surrey, UK

Phone Model:
BB 9800 Torch
BlackBerry 8900
SE W910i
Nokia 5800

Hi Atul,

Ok, I've now added a map link to the 'Inline HTML Text' style livelinks. However I'm starting to wonder if this is actually what you're after? I was thinking that you had your own website in which you could embed the <iframe> HTML code as given on the Livelink page. Is this not the case? Was it that you just wanted a URL that you could post in newsgroups/twitter etc that people could click in order to then view your location in Google, etc?

If so, I could create a new type of Livelink that would effectively be a 'redirection' page - so people would click the livelink URL (or enter your tinyurl.com address if you wanted to create one of these to use instead of the slightly longer livelink URL), they would then be taken to a brief page from TMJ saying 'redirecting to map' etc, and then the Google/Microsoft/Yahoo etc map would appear. Does that sound more useful?

Cheers,
Stephen
 

amohan

6:00
Wednesday
27-Aug-2008

Hello Stephen,

The idea is to put in a link to my twitter/forum posts that would show my current location as registered with your site at that given moment.

I've no issues with the TMJ page before being taken to Google Maps page. I would rather like it that way, you have a great & helpful site here and it SHOULD be promoted more ! I like this idea, that way more users can use your service and spiral it forward ! Great !

BTW, have u had a look at www.mgmaps.com, in its phone utility they show yahoo maps with ones current position & GPS statistics, have you give a thought of similar feature implementation in your great software as well ?

Atul
 
 

Stephen

9:55
Thursday
28-Aug-2008

Location:
Surrey, UK

Phone Model:
BB 9800 Torch
BlackBerry 8900
SE W910i
Nokia 5800

Hi Atul,

Ok, I've now added a new Livelink type - 'Redirection Link', which displays the brief TMJ page and then redirects to a third party map, eg Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. Hope it works as expected!!

Regarding the maps, I do have some further features in the pipeline, though I'm afraid they're still heavily based around OpenStreetMap so might not be too useful for India! :-(

Cheers
Stephen
 

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