mapkit :: new mashup tool by platial
"put an interactive map on your website/blog in under a minute" via platial's new mapkit, or so we heard. okay. start: 0.00
Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'Class DbConn - Line(461) Failed to execute query'…
end: 0.56. oops. we had the very easy registration form completed in under a minute and were ready to receive our mapkit, but received the above error on submit.
try again. start: 0.00
end: 0.20
wow!!! instant mashup in under a minute. the claim is true, but will it work for you? mapkit will work on any site that doesn't strip out javascript or force content through an html conversion. many of the blog services and products [such as wordpress, which the labs uses*] do strip & convert blog posts.
ok. let's get advanced and try to customize our map. start: 0.00
end: 0.45. ok. a little disappointing, though, since the only customization permitted was changing the marker to one of six predefined styles. [it also appears that one can only have one mapkit per page.]
overall, mapkit is a very simple to use, fast, and useful application. and, at a cost of $0, one can't beat the price point.
*to run javascript on a self-hosted wordpress blog, download and install the text control plugin. cut and paste your javascript into the body of the post [<script type="text/javascript" languge="javascript"></script>], and set the text control to format the post with "no formatting" and "no character encoding."
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:53 pm
thanks for putting us to the test. i hope it’s clear that this is more or less an alpha release, trying to really figure out what people want, what people expect, and what people are bumping into bug wise.
question: with all the talk about how putting this into a blog post is quirky, there remains the question of what kind of value would a mapkit map really have inside a blog post vs on a static page somewhere.
that first error you got, can you drop me a line, i’m curious if it was a momentary glitch or something more.
also,
the wordpress plugin link above is busted.
November 3rd, 2006 at 3:47 pm
thanks for the comments, jason. i agree, putting a mapkit map inside a blog post would be a bit silly, because the map would soon disappear. however, putting a mapkit map on a wordpress page instead of a wordpress post would have value. since wordpress pages are stored and processed the same way that the posts are, a plugin such as text control would still be necessary.
also, thanks for looking out re the busted plugin link. unfortunately, not sure what to say. the link is correct and worked yesterday, but now the dev.wp-plugins.org site appears to be down. hopefully it will reemerge soon.
November 8th, 2006 at 10:44 am
hi! i added wisconsin. it seemed to work!
your neighborhood rogue mapper,
mappgrrl