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As long as I have people's attention, does anyone know if there is a site where I can convert street addresses to long/lat ?

I want to make a map for the Views and Brews Pubs and hikes...
 
Tom Rankin said:
As long as I have people's attention, does anyone know if there is a site where I can convert street addresses to long/lat ?

I want to make a map for the Views and Brews Pubs and hikes...

There are several. Including this one, which shows you the results from several popular ones (includes links to the sites themselves as well):

http://stevemorse.org/jcal/latlon.php

It even has a batch mode, which I've not actually used.

Google Earth can also do it. Put in the address, press search. On the placemark that appears (when the zoom stops), right-click and choose "Properties". In the pop-up that appears, you will get the Lat / Lon, in DD MM SS.SS (hundredths of a second).

Tim

Edit: I just entered all the lat/lon results for my house address into Google Earth, and Yahoo! was spot on my driveway. The other two were within reach of Tom Brady's arm... or maybe David Ortiz' bat.
 
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Pure genius

Thanks, Tom, nice addition to the site and it works as a handy (refresher) pop quiz.
One would certainly think a commercial site like Google should have contacted David Metzky before appropriating his work.
We hear about Google's piracy on a grand scale but here's a case of an individual we know and respect whose work, a labor of love that has benefited all of us, was just plain ripped off.
Wow! Call a lawyer, join a class-action suit, get the money and throw a party.
 
jjmcgo said:
One would certainly think a commercial site like Google should have contacted David Metzky before appropriating his work. We hear about Google's piracy on a grand scale but here's a case of an individual we know and respect whose work, a labor of love that has benefited all of us, was just plain ripped off. Wow! Call a lawyer, join a class-action suit, get the money and throw a party.
Google didn't do it. Someone created a list that uses google maps or google earth, and posted it to another board.
 
Someone uploaded a file, in which someone linked each placemark to Dave Metsky's site.

Google, the web-crawler / search engine / corporate entity, did not appropriate Dave's content, any more then if you type in a generic white mountain term (to www.google.com) and press "I feel lucky" you are likely to end up at Dave's site (they indexed and copied it, but Dave is free to prevent that via a robots.txt file.)

You can probably find out who uploaded the file to the Google Earth Community site and take action based on that.

It's no different then if I took Dave's recent skiing video and uploaded it to YouTube. Dave can't be mad at YouTube. Same with record companies. Dave may have a case to ask Google to get rid of that file, depends on their terms of use.

Tim

Edit: Great minds think alike, Tom :D
 
I'll look into it, but as others have said, Google didn't do anything. I really don't mind what happened, it's just nice to be asked/notified.

-dave-
 
David Metsky said:
I'll look into it, but as others have said, Google didn't do anything. I really don't mind what happened, it's just nice to be asked/notified.

-dave-

I'm sure you don't need me to tell you this Dave, as I'm sure you're already fully aware. When you put alot of stuff out there, particularly on the internet, people will all too often find ways to use/borrow/claim other peoples intellectual stuff. The higher quality it is, the more likely it is to happen. Let's face it Dave, your stuff is high quality, and thus a bigger target. Very little you can do (without getting costs involved).

As an example, a poor one perhaps, but an example nonetheless. Before I start, I should say Tom fully asked my permission to use my template and been more than kind in letting people know the genesis of this map came from my efforts. But still, I'll use this map (and the Catskill one) as an example.

Over 8 months ago, I spent 10-14 hours of my life researching, figuring codes, learning Google API stuff and looking for the EZ map. It's for a project running in the background of my life, but it was not a real easy thing to learn (from scratch). About a month ago, Tom wrote and said he liked my map and asked if I could assist in making one for the Catskills. I gave him the Google stuff and that was the end of it.

Using his skills, he used my template and modified it for his purposes. Again, he had my permission, but the point is, ANYONE could have done the same thing without bothering to ask first, and over the past few years many have........ It's happens all the time, as you know.

Now this map comes out (I did not know a White Mountain map was in the offing). I could be a little bummed knowing that I put a lot of work into it and it basically is being used for another purpose (far off course from the original) and when I come out with my project (if ever) it will not be a new concept. Who knows how many other maps are coming. However, since Tom actually went farther then most people EVER would, I've come to be humbled to think that he though enough of my template to put out other stuff in a similar fashion. If someone else would have done it without asking, I have been like you, but. WHAT can you..... not much

My long-winded extra wordy point to all this............... Your site is the very best when it comes to White Mountain Resources and people will want to link (associate with it) as often as possible. Look at it as a compliment that someone thought to pick your site as THE resource to go to. :cool:

ONCE AGAIN, TOM HAD MY PERMISSION and did nothing wrong. I'm perfectly satified with his effort. I'm only trying to illustrate a point.
 
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David Metsky said:
I'll look into it, but as others have said, Google didn't do anything. I really don't mind what happened, it's just nice to be asked/notified.
My picture was taken from the net, and put into at least a half dozen magazines, without my knowledge. (The latest one IS asking my, though :) ) I've been on the COVER of a magazine! (Safarir). Imagine waiting in line at a supermarket, then seeing your picture on a magazine in one of their racks.

That's the reality of the net. May not be right, but that's the way it is.

Oh Mavs....My picture was NOT quality stuff either.
 
For the record, that other 48 map site didn't actually copy Dave Metsky's photos, just embedded them. That's rather different both in terms of copyright law and as a practical matter: it is easy to block any given website from doing that, once you notice it.

You can also prevent *any* website other than your own from embedding an image from your site, but this also means that no outside sites (unless you set up a whitelist) can *link* directly to an image - they have to link to an HTML page instead.

Here's an interesting idea:
you can redirect any outside link to an image to a dynamically-generated HTML page containing of the image (plus, optionally, a little note like "image from www.mywebsite.com"). That means embedding fails (wrong file type), and direct links still succeed.

[ I got that idea from from http://alistapart.com/articles/hotlinking , which shows how to do it in PHP on Apache ]

For my personal site, I encourage linking, but I ask for credit for embedding. Of course, all my photos are under a Creative Commons license, so I encourage outright copying too, as long as it's for noncommercial purposes and I get credit.
 
It's the same images that are available on Google Earth. The image that shows my house is from 4/21/2005. But it is different from area to area.
 
Mine in the western Whites could be '05 too, but nothing that has changed since then would be perceptible at this scale. My neighbor's, however, must be within the last few months because it shows a timber cut finished this winter.
 
Tom:
Thanks. I clicked on the link, and followed the trails I hiked last weekend in the rain. Only took me 1 hour to do all of them.....Appreciate your hard work
b.
 
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