gazzanic

I'm in. Cheers Gazza

The Track Pro, which I would recommend above the Track One, has a recommended retail of $1670 plus GST, get it through me and I'll save you a bit plus you'll help the WhereAreWe site out. I'm not sure what the SDK is but I can find out if you like. I believe the phones are available in selected Vodafone outlets, contact me off list and I'll find out your nearest stockist. I think that Benefon are working on a GPRS version but don't quote me on that. Cheers Gazza

The Garmin Rino may not be available here but Benefon GPS/GSM mobile phones are now available. See www.benefon.com for details of the Track, Track Pro and Esc! phones. The Esc! is a pretty cool bit of kit with its built in maps but unfortunatley costs just over $2000 retail. If anyone is interested though please talk to me before buying one, I may be able to save you a bit. I've been doing some work on tracking these through the www.wherearewe.co.nz web site and have been thinking about recreational uses for them as well. I've got a Track Pro that I would be willing to loan if anyone has any ideas for a game based around it. If anyone wants to try tracking my phone get in touch and I'll give you the number and SMS command you need to send it. Cheers Gazza

I was keeping the change low key as it is still in beta mode but Nick is right, I have started using the official LINZ Topo Online mapserver on www.wherearewe.co.nz. I think the site is currently the only place the public can actually see the maps that will be available. I think they are a big improvement over the GeographyNetwork maps I was using. If you have any feedback on the maps I can pass it on. For those of you that are using the site I'll be making some changes over the weekend to use NZTM projected maps rather than the unprojected ones. This should speed things up a bit and make road intersections look like right angles. You can still use NZGD2000 (WGS84) lat/longs in the URL's but will also have the option to use NZTM northings and eastings, using north= and east=. Cheers Gazza

This looks like it could be right up my street, my geodetic calculators at http://www.wherearewe.co.nz cover some of the functions that would be needed. I'll be interested in helping out. Cheers Gazza

This looks like it could be right up my street, my geodetic calculators at http://www.wherearewe.co.nz cover some of the functions that would be needed. I'll be interested in helping out. Cheers Gazza

quote:It would be great if the status bar (that shows the lat/long at the mouse position) could show the distance the mouse is away from the current displayed point. This would allow you to get an idea how far something (geocache, minutewar flag etc) is away from the nearest road. Done, also you can change newzealand.html in the url to nzjourney.html and use those tools to get range and bearings etc. Cheers Gazza [This message was edited by gazzanic on May 26, 2002 at 08:09 PM.]

Before I started at survey school I had a summer job with DOSLI, as it was called then doing exactly that, driving round all day looking for benchmarks that hadn't been used in a while and fixing them up. Guess you guys would call it a dream job! Was quite good actually, no GPS though so it was a bit harder. Cheers Gazza

Thanks Nick, I've just purchased software that allows me to input the topo data into Illustrator and use that to create higher quality maps, so that will be another service I'll offer. Just a matter of learning how to use it now. Thanks for the idea. Cheers Gazza

That's fine Nick just be aware of a few things, firstly the map server I'm using at the moment is just the test one from GeographyNetwork.co.nz and isn't guaranteed to be up 100% of the time. (that should change in the next few months) Secondly if I can't get businesses or individuals to support the site then I can't afford keep it free for uses like yours indefinitely, as much as I'd like to. So if any of your users know business that would be willing pay a license fee to have location maps on their web sites or email signatures or just advertise please let them know about the site. Anyone else reading this please note that this only applies to Minutewar please ask my permission before using the site for any other similar use. Cheers Gazza

quote: Looks pretty good to me. However just wondering why there appears to be some distortion when the map is rendered, on my machine at least. In reality the streets are at right angles to each other. When I view this map the streets are not crossing at right angles. I guess this is something to do with the projection being used or similar .... ? Well spotted, the maps are currently unprojected on WGS84 so when I ask for a map the same amount of degrees in width and height you get that distortion. If the site gets the support I hope it will I'll purchase my own map server and will have the option of projecting the maps into northings/eastings which should improve things. Cheers Gazza

quote: Yes, I really wanted degrees and decimal minutes (as this is how the WGS-84/NZMG2000 are reported on the cache pages) and of course without having to find the degrees symbol on the keyboard Try it now, just make sure that if you are entering decimal minutes that the seconds field is set to zero or it will add that as well. Cheers Gazza [This message was edited by gazzanic on May 14, 2002 at 03:27 PM.]

quote: Yes, I really wanted degrees and decimal minutes (as this is how the WGS-84/NZMG2000 are reported on the cache pages) and of course without having to find the degrees symbol on the keyboard Try it now, just make sure that if you are entering decimal minutes that the seconds field is set to zero or it will add that as well. Cheers Gazza [This message was edited by gazzanic on May 14, 2002 at 03:27 PM.]

quote:Originally posted by BigNick: Opps, it is really broken. If you click on the map it does not generate the correct URL now either. I had it do that to me once but refreshing the page cured it and I couldn't duplicate it, if anyone can do it consistantly please let me know how. Cheers Gazza

quote:Originally posted by BigNick: OK, what am I doing wrong? If I enter a set of co-ords with decimal degrees it ignores them. ie if I enter "-43 34.648" and "172 40.225" it just resolves to "-43" and "172" Decimal degrees would be -43.5774666, 172.67041666 you are entering degrees and decimal minutes and the program (or the programmer) isn't smart enough to realise that. If you want to I could split the coords into seperate degrees/minutes/seconds fields which would allow you to do the above. Cheers Gazza

It's changed. Cheers Gazza [This message was edited by gazzanic on May 12, 2002 at 02:45 PM.]

The comment field can contain anything you want and it will appear in the tooltip that appears when you move the mouse over the red dot. It can even contain HTML. Use this page to create your URL's; http://www.wherearewe.co.nz/geturl.html Cheers Gazza

Hi all, I've just developed a web site that I think you guys will find useful. The address is www.wherearewe.co.nz. The best feature of the site is that you can create a URL such as: http://www.wherearewe.co.nz/newzealand.html?lat=-43.20&lon=171.029&scale=5&comment=Comment+here for use on your web site, email etc, which when clicked on will create an interactive topo map showing your location. Even better is that I hope to keep it free for uses such as geocaching. Please check out the site and give me any feedback and suggestions as to how I can make it more useful for you. Cheers Gazza

I've just come across this site and I'm wondering if the tools I'm developing can help you kiwi geocachers out there and save you spending $100's on mapping software. My interactive maps of NZ are at www.divespots.co.nz and I'm currently working to integreate the maps with the online topo maps at www.geographynetwork.co.nz, you can see a preliminary version at http://www.divespots.co.nz/development/northlandindex.shtml which is using a world map for now. If I can develop these to suit your situation get in touch. Cheers Gazza