Monday, April 11, 2011

Help Shape Maps.Ubuntu.com

About either months ago, I had started on a fun little project to raise awareness of how widely used Ubuntu Server is around the world. The result was http://maps.ubuntu.com/ a web tool allowing anyone using Ubuntu Server to "mark" his location on a global map. This was launched with celebrations for 10.04.1, and thousands of cities were marked (woohoo). The project code was open-sourced and lives at https://launchpad.net/mapuntu/trunk

It's been a while since the project was last updated, a few days ago, an Ubuntu community member ( hey Ronnie ) stepped up to re-shape the mapuntu project and relaunch it into an inspiring map that helps anyone record and locate Ubuntu events around the globe! The first part of that effort is creating a proper back-end API, everyone is encouraged to click that link and leave comments. If you are inspired by that project, and would like to help, please get involved! Things you can do to help include

  • Review and enhance the proposed API
  • Help write python code to implement the backend api
  • Write html/css/js for the front-end
  • Play with the code, test it, report bugs, adapt to your own website!


If you want to talk more about this, Please join #ubuntu-locoteams on IRC and ping Ronnie or myself (kim0, also on #ubuntu-cloud).

8 comments:

Tom said...

Yay for more Google lock-in. Why not OSM?

Kamal said...

Hi Tom,
That's a perfect example of something you can help implement! In fact it would be great to see OSM and others among multiple backends

Anonymous said...

@Tom

In the past there was already such discussion. A really good answer to this question can be found here:

http://drupal.txwikinger.me.uk/content/why-ubuntu-using-google-maps-and-not-openstreetmaps#comment-629

Anonymous said...

The commenter that @ronnie.vd.c links to clearly does not know what he is talking about. Almost everything he says is wrong.

There is just no question that Ubuntu should support an open and free software project like OSM.

Unknown said...

Maybe you should consider using OpenStreetMap backgrounnd mapping. It is within OpenLayers with copyleft

Kamal said...

At everyone who wants to see OSM used, I'd love that too, the project is open source, please join and make it happen

Abdelrahman said...

hi man,
It would be nice in the page that list he api's if there is mark or something indicating the status of the api (in progress, done, open) bc i was trying to implement the geoip one but then i noticed that it is already there under /hit/ url ??

ofc, if lunchpad supports an issue tracking portal for the projects it hosts that would be even better, but i am not sure if it does.

Kamal said...

@Abdelrahman, well you shouldn't work alone :) Please ping us on irc to coordinate which piece you'll crunch on. Thanks