GPS Toys

Posted by Rachel Wed, 05 Jul 2006 03:18:00 GMT

I start of with GeoTool, a Google Maps IP address locator -- a nice IP address/hostname look-up utility (GeoLite Country from MaxMind) and Google Maps mash-up. I get back somehting a little curious:

Hostname :      am.orpho.us
IP Address :    209.67.252.114  
Country Code :  US (USA)
Country Name :  United States
Region :        NC
City :          Cary
Postal Code :   27511
Latitude :      35.7509
Longitude :     -78.7789

Cary, North Carolina -- wait what?!

That seemed a little strange, so I locate my server using DNSstuff.com WHOIS. It turns out, my WHOIS results are not very interesting, DNSstuff WHOIS for 209.67.252.114 returns the Savvis address for the 209.67.0.0 - 209.67.255.255 block net range.

OrgName:    Savvis 
Address:    3300 Regency Parkway
City:       Cary
StateProv:  NC
PostalCode: 27511
Country:    US
NetRange:   209.67.0.0 - 209.67.255.255


I ping my colo people...

12:37 < rachel> I tried http://www.rleeden.no-ip.com/geotool.php
12:37 < rachel> on am.orpho.us and get Cary, NC - what gives?
12:38 < dude1> our IPs are in a block owned by Savvis, which
                  is based out of NC
12:39 < rachel> yea, I got there after a little looking
12:39 < dude2> we discussed this a while back when dude3 naively
                  did what you did
12:39 < dude2> and this my friends is why determining location 
                  from IP is hard and fraught with danger
12:41 < rachel> but I want to play with
                http://gps.hackaday.com/entry/1234000263031072/
                and http://geourl.org/
12:42 < rachel> do you know the address of our savvis center?
12:42 < dude2> its on a piece of paper at home
12:42 < dude1> ******?
12:42 < dude2> they don't publish it
12:43 < dude2> its in ******
12:45 < rachel> well then maybe I should stop what I'm doing ;)
12:46 < dude2> or say that rockyluck is near LA
12:46 < dude2> rather than trying to say "the IP address is 
                near ******"
12:47 < dude2> because that same IP address is "near" domains 
                  belonging to people living in LA, San Fran, Boston, 
                  Seattle and North Providence


He's got a good point, the underlying location of my web server is not nearly as interesting [to me] as is the location from which the content is being generated - a.k.a. me.

So I start over using some more "interesting" information, my general location: Los Angeles, CA 90072

I search google maps for and click "Link to this page" which reveals the Lat/Long in the URL:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Los+Angeles,+CA+90072 &ie=UTF8&ll=34.052233,-118.24276&spn=0.100412,0.21698&om=1

I know that there must be an easier way to do this, so if you're lazy like me, go use GPS Visualizer: Address instead.

My search query looks like this:

city,state,zip
Los Angeles,CA,90072

I get back:

type    latitude    longitude   city    state   zip country
W       34.0978     -118.3072   Los Angeles CA  90072   us


Convert this to degree/min/sec using GPS Visualizer: Calculators:

Degrees Deg° Min Deg° Min' Sec"
LAT: 34.0978 N34°5.868 N34°5'52.08"
LON: -118.3072 W118°18.432 W118°18'25.92"



A little fun with hack-a-day...

Re: howto: geocaching with google and terraserver

First, locating a picture of this via terraserver; and then writting the final Google Maps query, which looks like this:
http://maps.google.com/?sll=34.0978%2C-118.3072



Now let's play with GeoURL...

Following the easy steps to adding yourself to GeoURL, I wrote some meta data tags (to be later added to the tags of RockyLuck):

<META name="ICBM" content="34.0978, -118.3072" />
<META name="DC.title" content="RockyLuck" />


And generate my GeoTags for good measure:

<META name="geo.position" content="34.0978;-118.3072" />
<META name="geo.region" content="US" />



A little Typo hacking...

Now where-oh-where do I add these META tags... ~/www/typo-root/themes/origami/layouts/default.rhtml
There is already a line:

<%= meta_tag 'ICBM', config_value(:geourl_location)  %>


I update my site's GeoURL admin section, which will populate this tag to look like this:

<META content="34.0978,-118.3072" name="ICBM" />


Wonderful, however... I'd still like to add the additional META tags for the complete Geo set, so I mod default.rhtml file (I'll do this dynamically a little later) adding:

<%= meta_tag 'DC.title', page_title %>

<META name="geo.position" content="34.0978;-118.3072" />
<META name="geo.region" content="US" />


Now back to GeoURL to ping myself and check that it's working... wonderful.

  Ping completed!
  You can now see your "neighbors".
  Ping done at 07/05/06 18:14:11+0000.



Resources:

Additional:

Older posts: 1 2 3 ... 13