Business

Programming on a new platform: Earth

Since Google launched Google Earth and, more importantly, its Google Maps API, there is now a new platform, Earth, on which developers can write web applications. First, there are the “mashup” products on various websites, such as those listed on MapBuilder.net.

Now there are applications that take Earth-based programming to new heights and scales that have not been reached before. Claim The Earth (http://www.ClaimTheEarth.com) was initially developed as one of these games that allows players to claim land as a Monopoly game. The unique thing about this game is that it has a vast area of ​​land for players to cover (the entire land), which is currently claiming a Guinness World Record for “a monopoly-like game played by the majority of players.” The game organizer intends the game to last until 5 billion points are claimed (similar to the actual Earth population) or 1/4 of the land area is claimed. Another surprising thing is that said system is housed in a pair of 233 MHz Pentium II PCs running Linux systems. It was unthinkable to run applications on such a large scale without web services or the concept of “mashup”.

The emergence of software applications like Claim the Earth signifies serious attempts to bring the Google map into more business-oriented application development than simply mapping locations, displaying markers for local searches.

The creators of Claim the Earth have worked in the GPS location-based service industries for many years. Having customers always submit carefully typed addresses for fleet-based services has been one of the biggest headaches in the trucking industry. A customer can type: “1234 Main ST”, “1234 Main Street”, “1234 Main Str”, “1234 Main”, not to mention misspelled words and other more complex scenarios like “unit 4”, “# 4”. , “Apartment 4”, “Apartment 4”, “Assistant: John Smith”, etc. on the address line, all of which have been problems that need to be dealt with by computer systems. However, no previous system has solved these problems well, when problems such as “1234 Main Street” could be valid addresses in multiple ZIP codes are taken into account.

With the new scheduling platform, Earth, a customer who orders pizza or package delivery / pickup can simply point out the location and request a delivery to (38.897596, -77.036648), in the same way that they can claim a claim in “Claim the earth”. . Of course, no human has to endure the suffering of remembering latitude and longitude before placing an order, everything is done through the graphical user interface (GUI) just like no one needs to remember any IP address to browse. the Web. Orders containing latitude and longitude will contain address information that is indisputably more accurate and precise than addressing from a traditional order-taking system, with the advantage of being friendlier to GPS navigation systems. The traditional address-based location system, when translated into a format usable by an in-vehicle GPS navigator, can still be “garbage in and garbage.”

In today’s environment of rising gasoline prices, this GPS coordinate-based ordering system will also be useful for utility personnel at utility companies. One of the most frequent complaints from field crews at utility, cable and road repair companies has been, “I was wandering around all morning just to find a place that was not reported. If it was near where I live or near from the city center, I would have caught it right away … but this is in the middle of nowhere … “

They cannot lose the location now with the GPS coordinates contained in the order entered from a WYSIWYG GUI. The same concepts can be applied in application development for oil and gas exploration, news / crime reports, avalanche reports, environmental services, etc. There is a new platform for rewriting many address-based applications.

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