This week the LDS Church has launched a beta for the new meeting house locator at http://beta.maps.lds.org. The current site at http://www.lds.org/basicbeliefs/meetinghouse has been adequate, but the new site utilizes both Microsoft and Google mapping technologies to provide the kind of mapping experience that most of us have come to expect from online maps. Here are a few features that really seemed to stand out, beyond the expected address lookup, mapping, and directions:
Ability to switch between Google and Microsoft maps. Some locations are more current with one map versus the other.
Ability to switch to Microsoft 3D view of the current location if Virtual Earth 3D is installed (also in beta)
Even if you don’t know the address or your address isn’t found, you can use your mouse to place a marker on the map to identify your location.
Not only will the application return the closest meeting locations, congregations and times, but it will provide a local contact name and number if you have questions.
I noticed a few bugs switching between maps, particularly when my connection was running slow, but for a beta launch it looks very promising!
There are now thousands of instances where developers and businesses have used Google Maps APIs to create maps integrated with their own data (also called mashups). Where geographic data used to be limited to specialized developers and organizations with a large budget, this ability is now in the hands of high school students with pet projects.
Last night Google launched a preview release of Google App Engine, "a way for developers to run their web applications on Google’s infrastructure." This promises to be equally enabling but not limited to a specific function like mapping tools. Any generic application which requires an application server, web server, and database can be powered by this infrastructure.
With Google App Engine, developers can write web applications based on the same building blocks that Google uses, like GFS and Bigtable. Google App Engine packages those building blocks and provides access to scalable infrastructure that we hope will make it easier for developers to scale their applications automatically as they grow. This means they can spend less time dealing with system administration and maintenance, and more time building and improving their applications. (There’s more detail on the new App Engine Blog.)
…This preview of Google App Engine is available for the first 10,000 developers who sign up; we will increase that number in near future. So, developers, please sign up, download the SDK, and start your engines.
Here is a geeky step by step video for using Google App Engine with Python:
Much the same way that various site have used GoogleMaps to create their own web content, the LDS Church has released an API to the scriptures so that this data can be redistributed and utilized for other applications. I’m excited to see more and more of these kinds of services being offered by the Church.
There is a lot of interest in the community to offer scriptures services. Here are a few that I have found:
Among those even remotely active in genealogy, people are wondering when the New FamilySearch site will be available. The first public beta tests happened during the spring of 2006. The Family History department announced that during the summer of 2007, a few temple districts would be given access, and it would roll out slowly over 2007 and hopefully finishing up by the end of 2008 (see current Google Maps display of this roll out).
Very little information has been publicly announced by the Family History department regarding the functionality of the new site. But once the first beta testers were able to review it, some of this information has spread. But for those who already have access to the site, they have confirmed that the functionality has changed from the initial beta tests. This confirms the general knowledge that a primary reason for the slow roll out is to not only to increase the performance of the searches and add capacity to the data repository, but to make critical corrections to the functionality, making it easier to use by everyone.
At the Layton Utah Kays Creek stake family history fair, I presented what information I had found regarding the New FamilySearch site (you can refer to a PDF version of my notes and slides). Continue Reading »
This week the LDS Church has launched a beta for the new meeting house locator at http://beta.maps.lds.org. The current site at http://www.lds.org/basicbeliefs/meetinghouse has been adequate, but the new site utilizes both Microsoft and Google mapping technologies to provide the kind of mapping experience that most of us have come to expect from online maps. Here are a few features that really seemed to stand out, beyond the expected address lookup, mapping, and directions:
Among those even remotely active in genealogy, people are wondering when the