the ExploreShanghai blog

I’m sorry to report that the ExploreShanghai city map will be taken offline at the end of the year.

Unfortunately due to work commitments I haven’t had time to really finish it or implement new features, and that looks unlikely to change for the foreseeable future. Shanghai still desperately needs a good English-language online street map, and if you want to develop one I wish you good luck!

The good news is I will continue to update the metro map with new lines, stations and features: see the next post for more details!

keep exploring

matt

I’ve been playing with the Garmin Communicator Plugin API. There’s a browser plugin for IE and Firefox; once installed you can communicate with your GPS device via Javascript. I’ve managed to integrate this with my development version of the city map, see below! Quite useful if you’re heading somewhere in a strange part of town.

I’m testing out GPS integration for the new version of the City Map! This GPS trace was recorded travelling down Jianguo Lu. It’s not perfect (Shanghai has too many tall buildings which block the signal) but it should make adding bus route overlays much easier

The data was captured using my Garmin GPS

The new version of the city map is making good progress. Here’s a preview of the current development version (not yet online). You can see some of the new features, including the zoom slider, more detailed mapping and new pin types.

Try typing Hanzi into the green box, and watch the pinyin magically appear in a mockup of a Shanghai street sign. You’ll need to use your computer’s IME to enter the Chinese characters.

I’ve been spending some time reworking the ExploreShanghai City map. It’s not quite ready for primetime but I thought you might be interested in a preview. The new version will feature:

• Accurate street mapping for all of Shanghai
• Full zoom-in/zoom-out: see all of Shanghai or just your street
• Faster startup - downloads just the map data you need.
• Many more pin types and icons
• Turn on and off different pin types: see all hospitals, all Chinese restaurants, etc.
• An enhanced API with plotting by latitude/longitude for integration with other data (GeoRSS, KML files)

Look out for the new ExploreShanghai City to be launched in the next couple of months.

An example of the new categories. Categories can be turned on/off with checkboxes

Some detailed road data, you can see the Huangpu River in outline!

Some improvements on the city map:

• new nicer icons for pins
• improved road naming around zhongshan park
• corrected some metro station names
• oriental pearl tower
• miscellaneous bugfixes

keep exploring
matt

Some improvements to the city map!

1. Direct links now work: for each “pin” on the map you can generate a simple link, for example
   http://www.exploreshanghai.com/goto/le-nova-bar, or http://www.exploreshanghai.com/goto/da-an-garden.
   Handy if you’re giving directions to your house for a party
2. The direction of the nearest metro station will be highlighted if there is no metro station currently on screen,
   Check out the improved city map.

keep exploring
matt