Yahoo’s Placemaker Yields the GeoMaker Project

Andres Ferrate, July 3rd, 2009

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You may remember our earlier post on Yahoo Placemaker, a new “geo-enrichment” platform that includes an API (our Placemaker API Profile) that can be used to make applications and data sets location-aware by determining the “whereness” of unstructured content. Now, Yahoo developer evangelist Christian Heilmann has released GeoMaker, a new app that makes it dead simple to use the Placemaker API with any web site.

Christian developed GeoMaker as a side project using PHP and several Yahoo developer libraries (including YQL and YUI). Although in its initial stages, GeoMaker currently allows users to input text or a URL (e.g., http://icant.co.uk/geomaker/index.php?url=http://news.yahoo.com) to be ge-enriched. Subsequently, a Yahoo Map is output, including code for copying pasting the map on to your favorite site or blog. As a bonus, GeoMaker also outputs the geo-enriched location data in Geo Microformats. Christian has also put together a short video (below) that provides a good overview of GeoMaker on the Yahoo Developer Network Blog.

GeoMaker serves as a great example of how a viable and functional web app can be rapidly and easily developed by leveraging existing developer libraries and APIs. Christian is currently asking for feedback, which he intends to use to refine and improve GeoMaker, prior to making it available as an open-source project on GitHub (our GitHub API Profile). Nicely done, Christian!