GPS Coords of Church Sites

[Jesse Stay]

I figure now is a better time than any to rally the group. You guys are also welcome to pitch ideas like this any time you like.

I was just checking out the app "Field Trip" which just launched for Google Glass. I was thinking I could create something like this pretty easily for Church-related sites if we just had an open database somewhere of all the different church locations. All I need are GPS coordinates. Has anyone considered creating a wiki or open document of some sort where members around the world can add current and historical Church locations and metadata/info about those locations? With a simple database like that I could create a pretty simple Google Glass app (and the same goes for iPhone/Android I think, but those aren't my specialty) that notified you when you were near each.

Here's the app if you're interested in learning more:

http://www.fieldtripper.com/glass/#

--Jesse

Jesse Stay
http://jessestay.com

Author - I'm on Facebook--Now What???, Facebook Application Development For Dummies, Google+ For Dummies, Google+ Marketing For Dummies

[Greg Warner]

I would think you could scrape the addresses off the church website and then use some tool/API somewhere to convert addresses to GPS coordinates.  

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[Sean Gates]

Curation of the data would be good. Scraping the data may be prone to mistakes. There are lots of places not likely listed in church resources, too.

—
Sean Gates
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[Russell Hltn]

The question I have is how "historical" are we looking at?  At the top end is stories we've all heard.  But every building, former building, stake or ward has a story.  On one hand this could quickly be filled with minutia (the Prophet slept here).  On the other hand, it could be so sparse as to be of limited use.  Especially if you're traveling outside of the NY to UT migration routes.

 

There is/was a Church Historical Timeline application, but I'm not sure as it's active.  If it is active it seems like it would be smarter to add "place" to it rather then creating another historical database.

 

If it's not active, what about creating a category in Google maps?  Seems like that would simplify a number of things.  The hard part would be getting the category added.

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[Jesse Stay]

I say the more info the better. Let the user sort out how much detail they want.

--Jesse

[Russell Hltn]

Fair enough, but I'd think you'd want something to use for the filter.  Such as a field that notes if this is historical at the Ward, Stake, Region, or church-wide level.