We (I and my friend Will Kilburn) have just launched a wunnerful new web site:
MassTrails.com. It's a search engine that serves up free, downloadable, printable maps of hiking, biking and walking
trails, including state parks, rail-trails, town conservation lands
and private land trusts—all the places in Massachusetts where you can trespass with impunity. There are over 2000 entries, making it by far the most complete and up-to-date database of this sort around. Will invested a great deal of time in compiling the database, while I just slammed out some Python and Javascript and CSS to make the whole thing operate. (I wasn't really keeping track but I think the ratio of time spent slamming out code and fixing bugs to time spent drinking beer with Will was probably near one-to-one.) In case you are curious about the techie details, the database is a JSON document and the search engine is a Javascript function that runs inside the browser, so the whole thing is ridiculously fast and insensitive to server loads. We plan to eventually extend it to cover all of New England. If you want to steal our code and do a similar thing somewhere else in the world, we'd be flattered and give you all the code and maybe even some free advice (if you want it).
3 comments:
Bravo! Two friends drinking beer and making a gift to the community.
Exactly what the world needs most as compared to what the moneygrubbers do.
Would love to see something like this on the west coast!
How can I steal your code and do it for my state?
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