Ross Burtonhttp://www.burtonini.com/blogA potted account of Ross' lifeen60Ross BurtonToday's Second Geohackcomputers/geo-2008-05-13-15-15http://www.burtonini.com/blog/computers/geo-2008-05-13-15-15I managed to wangle a Fire Eagle invitation this morning, so over lunch I grabbed the Python API Kit and ... I managed to wangle a Fire Eagle invitation this morning, so over lunch I grabbed the Python API Kit and threw it at the sample Gypsy client. 

$ ./gypsy-fireeagle.py 00:0B:0D:88:A4:A3
got 51.861145 0.156275
Updated FireEagle

The first line is me running my script (this one is 64 lines, but it is half whitespace), telling it where my GPS is. The second line is the current position that my rather cheap and nasty GPS determined. The third line tells me that Fire Eagle has been updated with those coordinates.

Suffice to say I'm very impressed with Yahoo's geocoding software. My GPS never settles to an accurate reading and will happily jitter around a 20 metre wide circle for hours, but the location Fire Eagle is reporting me at is two doors away. I'm not exaggerating: it says number 9 on my street when it should be number 5. That is some incredibly accurate mapping they have.

]]>/computers2008-05-13T14:15:00ZToday's Geohackcomputers/geo-2008-05-13-10-50http://www.burtonini.com/blog/computers/geo-2008-05-13-10-50Following hot on the heels of Yahoo's announcement of their Internet Location Platform , I wrote a quick 20-line Python ... Following hot on the heels of Yahoo's announcement of their Internet Location Platform, I wrote a quick 20-line Python hack to convert from latitude and longitude to a place name. Because the ILP doesn't yet expose the ability to go from a position to a WOEID we have to ask the Flickr web services to do this first (as Flickr is owned by Yahoo this is using the same backend). Once we have the WOEID, it can be then be looked up on the ILP and useful information obtained. Example speak more than words: 

$ python geohack.py 
Using position 51.872330 0.161950
Got WOEID 12775
Got town Bishop's Stortford

Now to write a GeoClue provider which will fill in the locality information from the position. Long-term grand plans involve integrating all of this geo magic into Postr, somehow.

NP: Third, Portishead

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