Archive for February 7th, 2012
Omaha Coffee Shops!
Today’s topic? Highlighting the power of mashing up Factual data, BatchGeo geo-encoding, and A.PlaceBetween.Us meetup flashmob planning.
Today’s chosen real-world “pain point” app? Discovering coffee shops, that magical elixir, when out & about in beautiful Omaha, NE.
This map shows Omaha’s 125+ coffee destinations (independents & Panera Bread). Map layers are selected via the legend’s category pins & the “all categories” view are restored by clicking the legend’s black area.
View Omaha Coffee Shops (pins) in a full screen map
This second embedded map showcases BatchGeo’s clustering capabilities. Zooming in or clicking a cluster icon will expand cluster(s) into sub-clusters &/or individual coffee shop locations.
View Omaha Coffee Shops (clusters) in a full screen map
Factual provides many other data sets, all of which can be explored via their API. For example one method of exploring Factual’s API is by pasting the below string into Apigee’s generic console & pushing GET.
http://api.factual.com/v2/tables/s4OOB4/read?APIKey=SVo5aBbw0b1ttvGYKuO5Fh0IUhWeyJEFMhQ9UQiymNV0lt0RjtBxSdrxVTOvNMih&filters={“category”:{“$bw”:”Food%20%26%20Beverage%20%3E%20Cafes%2C%20Coffee%20Houses%20%26%20Tea%20Houses”},”status”:{“$bw”:”1″},”$loc”:{“$within_dist”:[41.2595,-96.02373,20000]}}&sort={“name”:1}
This API URI query string is provided by Factual when interacting with their data via the “Get API query” button to simplify developer forays. Also, for reference, each info pop-up card on the above maps contain:
- Coffee Shop Name (hyperlinked)
- Address & Phone Number
- Coffee Shop Category
- Directions Link via Google
- Meet-up Planner via A.PlaceBetween.Us
- Link to edit raw data sourced via Factual
- Fisheye image powered by Google Places
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entry written by Chris Augeri
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