Can I have gps ( the blue 'you are here' dot) on an embedded map?

[Birdwaves]

I am working on a walking tour for a museum in Old Deerfield,
Massachusetts, in the US. We have gotten some State and Federal grant
money to create a walking tour of the town that will show points of
interest of African-American history.

With Mike William's awesome site on the v2 API, I've created a
prototype map. You can see it on our testing server here:

http://centuries.digitalgizmo.com/team/walkingtour/afram_walkingtour/maptour_kml.html

Some points of interest here are the use of an external xml file for
the right-hand sidebar, the kml overlay, and the limits to the zoom
and boundaries. All very good stuff.

But we are faced with the limits of what we can do, and thinking it is
related to the v2 of the API. Specifically, we'd really, really want
the GPS functionality (the blue 'you are here' dot). Plus, v3 is
optimized for mobile devices. We are also concerned that v2 will go
away, and leave us in the lurch.

We will be purchasing iPads to loan out for the tour. Things we've
tried include creating a map in the new mobile version of
maps.google.com, Google Earth, and an app called KMLmapHD. But for
various reasons, none of these interfaces fit the bill. We keep coming
back to the maptour_kml.html map I created. We just need the blue dot!

MY question is this: Can I get the GPS functionality (blue dot) using
the v3 API? Secondly is there a site that that gives simple
instructions? I am not a javascript programmer, and found Mike
Williams' site invaluable. We do have a javascript programmer at our
disposal, but we can only afford to put him on the case if we know
that this can be done. (He would have to spend time/money
researching). All the web research seems to indicate that you can't do
all the things in v3 that you could do in v2.

Thanks!

[Rossko]

> MY question is this: Can I get the GPS functionality (blue dot) using
> the v3 API?

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/basics.html#Geolocation
gives the basics

> Secondly is there a site that that gives simple
> instructions?

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/

Some of Mike W's v2 code examples have been ported to v3 by Larry at
http://www.geocodezip.com/

> All the web research seems to indicate that you can't do
> all the things in v3 that you could do in v2.

Which things are you expecting to be a problem? I don't see anything
that's likely to be an issue in your demo.

>
> Thanks!

[Birdwaves]

On my iPad, the first example at:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/map-geolocation.html
does not give me the blue dot. Just a word balloon that says says
"Location found using HTML5." It did discover my location. If I knew
what the blue dot was called, I could research it...

On Oct 1, 6:02 am, Rossko <ros...@culzean.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> > MY question is this: Can I get the GPS functionality (blue dot) using
> > the v3 API?
>

> http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/basics.html...

> gives the basics
>
> > Secondly is there a site that that gives simple
> > instructions?
>
> http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/
>

> Some of Mike W's v2 code examples have been ported to v3 by Larry athttp://www.geocodezip.com/

[Chris Broadfoot]

Hi,

The blue dot (or something similar) can be achieved with a Marker with custom MarkerIcon.

As far as I know we don't provide any access to the blue dot. I'd suggest creating your own - that way you don't have to worry about any copyright issues.

Chris

--

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[Tony Jillson]

Thanks, Chris.

Interesting. I hadn't thought about a copyright issue, since the API is free to use. 

Anyway, I have no problem with making a custom marker. You can see them on our African American Walkingtour prototype here:

http://centuries.digitalgizmo.com/team/walkingtour/afram_walkingtour/maptour_kml.html

What I need is the same functionality, i.e. the marker must move around with you as you walk, in real time.

If that is not proprietary to Google Maps, can you point me to the code?

Thanks,

Tony

[Chris Broadfoot]

Check out the HTML5 geolocation API. You probably want "watchPosition":

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Using_geolocation#Watching_the_current_position

Spec: http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source.html#watch-position

Chris

--

http://twitter.com/broady