I've moved the site now to a new server that should be more stable. I'll add a second server when I relaunch the in-progress new version of the site.

Excuse the mess, we're rebuilding.

I've finally taken some time to clean up the code, optimize some slow paths, implement some new features. The site was unusable or even down for a few days while the database had a massage and the new foundation was being put in.

Thanks for the suggestions for the lat/long coding in the RSS feeds by the way. I'll add some of the more "standard ways"...

svn co http://svn.develooper.com/projects/geourl/trunk/ geourl

Before adding any new features, I'd like to get the outstanding bugs tackled first. (For example there's a bug that makes the /near/ page not show other weblogs at exactly your location).

If there's interest, I'll setup a mailing list for this...

It's a creative commons license, so I've added the CC XML markup to all the pages.

I added with two extra fields as in the following data. Suggestions for better ways to do it are welcome. (Accordingly this is subject to change at any moment! :-) )

  <item rdf:about="http://ericrichardson.com/">
  <title>eWorld: eric richardson meets the web</title>
  <link>http://ericrichardson.com/</link>
  <description>About 9.4 km away. Near Los Angeles.</description>
  <geourl:longitude>-118.25201</geourl:longitude>
  <geourl:latitude>34.0456</geourl:latitude>
  </item>

Please let me know if you do anything with this.

(Another change I did last week was adding Google Maps links to pages for sites in England and Ireland. Let me know if this is not working right for you of if you have more suggestions for maps)

I wanted to add some sorting options, an Atom feed and have it available in a sidebar (see the previous entry) before announcing it, so take this as an early preview announcement you get because everyone is asking. :-)

You can add ";format=rss10" to get the /near result in RSS 1.0 format or ";format=rss092" to get it in RSS 0.92 format. For example to get a feed of things near Jim use this URL: http://geourl.org/near/?p=http://trainedmonkey.com/;format=rss10

The old /rss10/ URLs from v1.0 are also working (they redirect to the new).

As mentioned I'm going to add an Atom feed and also make the old XML feed work again (with more data than the RSS feed).

• I want the mininews box on the front page to stay to the right of the worldmap when possible (as now), but wrap below rather than above the worldmap when you shrink the browser window. How to?

• If you can help with that, then I also need help adding a simple sidebar to the /near pages. :-) Please email me.

You can install it by clicking here: http://www.splintered.co.uk/extensions/geourl_0.2.xpi

update - It's now listed on addons.mozilla.org

update - someone else made another 1.5 extension.

Firefox will show a warning at the top of the screen, to proceed click "Edit options" and then "Allow" in the dialog that comes up. That'll make Firefox trust Patrick's site. Click "OK" and then click on the link to the extension again. When the extension has been installed you have to restart Firefox and then get the extension active in the toolbar by going to the menu "View" - "Toolbars" - "Customize" and then drag the GeoURL icon up to the toolbar. Whee, that was a lot of work. But try it, you'll like it.

update - Mark Zeman made a flickr world map extension based on the GeoURL extension.

Also: after you do a ping you should get a few more options for buttons (in 80×15 instead of just the strange 52×14 format).

update - eek, until I get around to install the Trackback moderation I'm going to disable that again. On my regular weblog I get very little trackback spam; but over here there's no end of it.

Today Laust Ladefoged (recenter) pointed out to me that MultiMap has maps for (almost?) all of the world, so I've added MultiMap links to all pages now.

If you know of a good map service (even if only for your country) that I can link to with lat/long coordinates, please let me know. To make it more likely I'll get around to it, please provide as much information as possible about the parameters required (sometimes the lat/longs are x100 or x1000 for example) and which countries are covered. Thanks!

(update: it's not been yoyo'ing since this post; I figured out what was wrong - yay)

The new site is scheduled to launch today, and I hope it does. GeoURL is a geographic search engine that essentially links the location of Web sites using GPS coordinates. You could find out, for example, if your favorite blogger lives anywhere near you--OK, I admit, that seemed to be its most promising feature. Still, bloggers have to find each other somehow, and there are probably other uses that have yet to be discovered.

What in tarnation is this thing!?

GeoURL maps geographic locations to websites letting you lookup websites near a location or near another website. It's great fun. If you haven't tried already, then go to the front page and click on a location on the map.

This looks a lot like something I've seen before ...

Yes, indeed! This is a relaunch (and re-implementation) of the original GeoURL site that was invented and built by Joshua Schachter (of del.icio.us fame). All the old URLs should work. If not, please send me a mail.

Why is it called beta?

Because we haven't tested it very much; and because there are still features missing that we are planning to add.

Why can't I zoom in on the map?

See "beta" above, we are working on it! And a bunch of other features; it's all very exciting. I haven't had time to work on the site since last weekend, so I decided that it'd be more fun to just get it released than to wait forever to get time to add Just One More Feature.

I have a suggestion! I want to help!

Drop us a mail; we ♥ suggestions!

Who are "we"?

Ask Bjørn Hansen made this and he likes to think that he's several people sometimes.