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April 23, 2007
Important Information on Maptacular
Maptacular is an Apollo application I wrote that lets you map addresses on your desktop (in vCard format) using Google Maps. You can download the public alpha binary from the Apollo application page on the Adobe Labs wiki, and if you're interested in the source code, read the entry previous to this one.
Some important information on Maptacular (which I should have mentioned when I first released the app):
- Once the application is running, move your mouse over to the left side of the window. A drawer will open with contacts. You can click on the contacts for more information, and you can also expand the contacts into address cards.
- To map an address, drag it onto the map.
- To get driving directions between two points, "pin" the drawer open by clicking on the circle in the upper right-hand corner of the drawer, then drag your starting point onto the map. Once it has mapped, drag your destination address onto the map. You should get driving directions between the two points.
- Maptacular creates a directory in your documents directory (either "Documents" on Mac, or "My Documents" on Windows). Any vCard you put in that directory will get added to the list. Right now, you have to restart Maptacular for it to pick up new vCards. (I need to add some polling code one of these days.)
- When Maptacular runs, it puts a sample vCard in your Maptacular directory. I did this to make it easier to demo. If you don't want this behavior, you'll have to change the source. Just look in the init function -- it's very easy to disable. Someday, I'll take this out.
- For a demonstration of how Maptacular works, you can check out this Google video.
- All the addresses and phone numbers in the sample vCard are fake. I've gotten tons of emails and IMs from people asking me if I meant to reveal all this personal information about my coworkers. All of the addresses point to offices or restaurants around the city. They look real because they had to actually be mapable. Oh, and most of the pictures are real, except for mine, who is my favorite character from Homestar Runner.
Posted by cantrell at April 23, 2007 11:11 AM | References
Comments
Hi Christian!
I have uploaded the really cool Maptacular to ApolloHunter
You can create an account and upload it yourself of course, if you want...
Posted by: Alexander Marktl at April 28, 2007 03:47 AM
Question: How would someone trap a click of a link that happens in the HTML control and launch the system's default browser. I was thinking of using the locationChange event but not sure how to launch apps outside of Apollo.
Posted by: Ryan at May 23, 2007 11:54 AM
Hello, Christian.
My name is Tera in Tokyo,Japan. and working and Blogging about Flash.
I'm interested in Flash on Wii, then I found your "Flash / JavaScript Integration kit".
It seems very helpful, but because I'm a entry leveled JavaScripter, I can't understand how it work.
So I translated the Kit's "readme.html" into Japanese. I wish it will be helpful for other Japanese FLASHer.
http://www.trick7.com/blog/2007/05/28-224730.php
Translation has not completed, but I uploaded the article little while ago.
I want your permission to open this article.
If You can't, Please notice me, and I will remove the article as soon as possible.
Sorry for take your time and my poor English.
Thank you.
(I failed to e-mail(***@macromedia.com) you, so I wrote here.)
Posted by: tera at May 28, 2007 08:31 AM
Very neat. How about dragging from the google map a location, into the VCard drawer and have it save the VCard. If that's possible, then dragging to the desktop could save that VCard file there too, etc.
I'm really digging concoctions like this.
Posted by: Chris Charlton at June 13, 2007 04:07 PM