Location Data From Stream API
GeorgeMedia
look at local tweets by city/state combo (I have to include state
because a lot of states have identical city names).
I WAS using the search API feature with geocodes to get local tweets
and it worked PERFECTLY minus of course the limited data set problem
-- but I obviously can't do that due to API call limits and having
(hopefully :)) thousands of users per day searching for local tweets
repeatedly.
Now according to Raffi Krikorian
"search, however, attempts to use other signals to determine where the
tweet
is, and will attempt to return "more" tweets when you use its "search"
parameter. it does not, however, expose those signals in the search
results."
Well, not having knowledge of those "other signals"....... leaves me
with pretty much nothing but the Location field to parse for location
information. Right now I'm working on a DB search scheme to match
likely city, state combos but other than that do you guys see any
other methodology I may be overlooking??
The location field, unless it contains lon/lat coordinates, is a mess
of garbage, nonsense, mispelled names, and a host of other useless
noise.
The ones that have lon/lat information in the tweet location field are
perfect because then I can do my own radius calculations locally. But,
for example, out of a 1.5 million tweet sample only 100,200 of those
had lon/lat coordinates :(
Mark McBride
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
> Parsing the location field is probably your best bet, but I'd say you have a
> challenging road ahead. It is indeed a mess, but there are geocoding
> solutions available to try and sort this stuff out.
Be *very* careful with "geocoding solutions", especially taking note
of the terms of service and licensing constraints. Google, Yahoo and
Microsoft all have restrictions on what you can do with their tools.
There are some open source / "free as in freedom" tools too, but they
may be more limited.
I've spent a number of hours recently working with various open source
projects associated with mapping earthquake and other disaster zones,
and this is a constant source of frustration. I'm guessing it would be
even more a source of frustration if you're building marketing / sales
tools rather than non-profit ones. People trapped in the rubble of a
collapsed build usually *want* to be found; people sitting in a
restaurant having a glass of wine with some friends might not. ;-)
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
borasky-research.net/m-edward-ed-borasky/
"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." ~ Paul Erdos
GeorgeMedia
cities so converting the location name to Lon/lat data is somehing I
can do in house. I can even do my own radius calculations no sweat. I
just am having trouble determining how I go about filtering out the
garbage in the location field and finding actual usable city/state
info.
Knowing how Twitter does it sure would help!
I wonder if they are using IP location info in their determination...
On Mar 5, 3:51 pm, "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <zzn...@gmail.com> wrote:
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
> Well I have Lon/lat data for all (not just major, all) US ans CA
> cities so converting the location name to Lon/lat data is somehing I
> can do in house. I can even do my own radius calculations no sweat. I
> just am having trouble determining how I go about filtering out the
> garbage in the location field and finding actual usable city/state
> info.
>
> Knowing how Twitter does it sure would help!
I've actually filed a defect on "How Twitter does it" ;-) "fart_robot"
from "Botland" shows up in Twitter Searches for PDX. ;-)
http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/detail?id=1348
I've also seen people from the UK and Australia show up in PDX searches.
Well ... "Botland" sorta sounds like Portland, right? ;-)