A plugin for Campsite that would allow it to use geographical information for articles, topics and other metadata. Such a plugin would have two main functions:
1) The input of geographical data in the Campsite admin interface, for example where a reporter or editor could mark on a map the location of the article he is describing. This could also be done with topics.
2) The output of geographical data as a supplement to article information, for example to display on a map all of the locations of articles posted in the last 7 days, or to provide an easy means of displaying a map along with an article.
Such a feature would store GPS coordinates (sometimes referred to as “geocoding”) in Campsite metadata, and would then use an external mapping service such as Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Encarta, Google Earth or a local portal’s map functions. These services also provide services to return GPS coordinates based on a user’s map clicks.
The function would then send the GPS coordinates to the mapping service to display them as an overlay “pin” in Google Maps and links to the articles.
A good example of how maps can be used together with content is the BBC’s coverage of flooding in Great Britain in 2007, which is displayed as a Google Map:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl;=en&msa;=0≪=51.507033,-0.942078&spn;=0.363271,0.925598&z;=10&om;=1&msid;=110697284745114202648.000435deadb5810139523
Google Maps provides detailed documentation of its API, which can be found here:
http://www.google.com/apis/maps/
Google Maps’ API documentation can be found here:
http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/
Yahoo Maps’ API documentation can be found here:
http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/
Ideally the same plugin could be used for Campcaster as well; Campcaster already has a “Location” metadata field.
