Map of Ottawa showing OttawaFoodies favourite restaurants [General]

2010 Jun 21
I had a user-interface suggestion when it comes to selecting a restaurant based on parts of town and neighbourhoods.

Would it be possible for this website to include a map of Ottawa with "favourited" restaurants layered on top with a small rating # (referenced to the rating system on the right-side margin on home page). It could be similar to a Google map with pushpins that show points of interest but for restaurants reviewed and rated by Ottawa Foodies only. It could even be referenced to Google Street View.

This way I could look at the map, find the neighbourhood, and then select a restaurant to tryout rather than trying to figure out what the neighbourhood is called, then doing a search on Foodie site and then trying to find where the restaurant is in relation to city landmarks on Google maps.

It would might also solve the West Wellington vs Hintonburg vs Mechanicsville and the Chinatown vs West Centretown vs Dalhousie Community problem.

Maybe even cross-reference the map to foursquare or Gowalla? or now am I making it too complicated...


2010 Jun 21
An option would be maps.google.com - could make a map there and people could contribute to it. A collaborative effort map? This way the burdon of doing it wouldn't be on any one person. Thoughts? I think it is possible to leave it open to anyone or just those invited/or requested to be a contribute. It could be search-able and entirely public or only for those who have the URL, which I suppose wouldn't matter if it were linked off the site.

2010 Jun 23
I'm not new to scripting google maps mashups (I set one up about 5 years ago, showing all the farms and markets in the region that offered fresh produce), and I'm very keen to integrate my site with google maps beyond the simple "Location" link on each vendor page.

However, my problem is that I need a reliable, low-maintenance way to get the Lat/Lon coordinates of a restaurant based on its name. I've often considered writing a kind of double lookup -- use the name to find the address, then convert the address to GPS coordinates, but the fear that holds me back is that this would become a high maintenance activity if we want consistently accurate results. I consider it a research project at this point. :-)

2010 Jun 23
I think it would only be high maint to get the current vendors converted over. After that on an ongoing basis I would think the volume would be pretty low.

You need to deputize a few people to help out with it.

Getting google to give you the GPS coordinates based on address is pretty easy. I wrote some code for that a few years ago and probably still have it around.

An initial pass would give you "here are all the ones I found" and "here are all the ones I did not".

The ones found would probably have to be tweaked a bit because of course google would have some of them off a bit. But that could be done on a case by case basis as someone complains. Or it should be easy to write a simple interface that gives a list of all the ones that need to be verified, and allow the deputies to verify them one at a time. You could keep a record in the DB of which deputy did each one (and fire those with a poor record :-))

The ones not found would be the hardest ones and would have to be done manually

2010 Jun 23
You technological people astound me. I still keep a hard (plasticized!) map of Ottawa in my glove box and it really is what I use most to find my way around. My GPS doesn't always do the trick and google maps or mapquest often leave me bewildered (or lost). But go for the best for the untechnologically challenged!