Geir Kokkvoll Engdahl, a Norwegian guy born in ‘83, posted a Google Maps API implementation of the classic Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) called “Optimap” on his blog last July, and has since added the ability to enter multiple destinations with lat/long codes, and also the javascript source code so we can examine and play with it. The application of course relies on Google’s routing engine (driving directions) to calculate distances between any two points, and it is not certain that this is always the shortest distance. There is a bit of discussion about this on the Google Maps API Group (search on “optimal route”). Engdahl’s program uses brute force up to 10 points, and ant colony heuristics from 11-20 points. With Google’s restrictions on daily driving-direction requests (10,000) the maximum number of points is limited to 20… so this website won’t soon become the UPS routing-tool-of-choice, but may be useful for you travelling googlemen and women.
Archive for the 'Blogs' Category
Google Earth Blog has postedan amazing collection (a “network link”) of weather tools from a variety of sources. This is a wonderful assembly by various authors, including live weather images, and animated projections of hurricanes. GEB has organized them in a way which is very easy to use, and the layers only turn on when you select them (unlike may other kmz files which load automatically), so it does not surprise you by taking a lot of time or computer memory. Drag and drop from their site did not work for me, but the KMZ file can be downloaded or opened from here. The blog article also explains the value of “network links” in Google Earth.
You might have thought nobody was doing this myMaps thing, until you look on Ongopongo, and they’re everywhere, they’re everywhere! It is now so easy to make your own collections of map information about absolutely anything or nothing. Today I discovered a noodle bar in my neighborhood highly recommended by a young English woman, but alas the noodles were overly salty and the cashews were old. So I removed her map from my mashup collection, making it a “nongopongo”.
This excellent blog, Nederkaart, by Remco Kouwenhoven, has been my inspiration. I’ve adapted the basic Wordpress format, using 3 Column K2, by Bharath Kumar, because I also saw limitations in the 2-column format and needed a robust template which would allow all kinds of pluggins. It was no easy chore to get it all together, but it was good to see a working model, telling me that if I tried a little harder, it could be done. Meanwhile, Nederkaart is the best source I can find for news on Google mashups. I might investigate some of these further, but encourage readers to go there for an eye-popping collection of posts. Oh yeah, forgot to mention it is in Dutch.
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