Here is an update on a previous posting regarding using Google maps and Geocoding APIs.

I had previously tried to use ontok to do my geocoding for a project that uses Google maps. As mentioned earlier I found ontok because I couldn’t get Yahoo’s geocoding API to work from my current webhost (Dreamhost).

Well, it turns out that ontok’s geocoding was inaccurate about 50% of the time at least for addresses in South Florida. So I revisited the Yahoo API. I still had the problem of not being able to use php’s file_get_contents() function on Dreamhost so I went back to trying to use cURL in order to call the Yahoo API.

In my research I found this resource at MapBuilder.net which provides a php script to call Yahoo’s geocoding API using cURL. As an added bonus it hooks up the API call via AJAX! I didn’t use the AJAX method for my project but it was very helpful for me to see some working code for the geocoding.

Next I hacked Phoogle (again!), this time getting it to work with Google Maps API v.2 as well as using the Yahoo cURL call for the geocoding.

Web 2.0 baby!

I have moved a lot of my sites over to Dreamhost and have been pretty satisfied so far. The control panel is very good and you can do some neat one-click installs of popular open-source packages like WordPress.

Today I had my first PHP Gotcha on Dreamhost.

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Papasoft is going through some Spring Cleaning. [read more...]

The web development world is buzzing about Web 2.0. Everybody’s got their own spin and every day there seem to be new ideological skirmishes going on about whether Web 2.0 is a significant paradigm shift or just hype. [read more...]

Most of the time when I build a web site for a customer I stick with one of the open source content management systems such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla (formerly Mambo) or TextPattern. I have already invested the time to learn the nuances of each tool so when I build a “brochure” site, say, with a blog component, most of my energy goes into creating the site layout (XHTML template) and navigation structure. [read more...]