We recently published our latest project: Open City Agora. This project was created with David Torralbo and me.
Open City Agora is our entry for the Google Places API Developer Challenge. The contest asked for applications that helped the communities by using Google Places API and Open Data information. You can vote for Open City Agora in the contest gallery page, just give us a +1.
Open City Agora is a site where users can mix layers from different sources into a map and share the created view. The layers that can be used in Open City Agora come from the Open Data information available in the cities, from Google Places API and from Google Maps API.
Some of the layers that can be used in Open City Agora are:
- Crimes in San Francisco
- Film locations in San Francisco
- Wifi hotspots in New York
- Sports courts in New York
- Traffic information
- Weather information
- Custom searches in Google Places
- Custom layers from a kml or fusion table
Open City Agora is currently available in San Francisco and New York, but we plan to add more cities. Users can vote for the next cities to include.
The project is built using:
- Google App Engine (java) – We used the clod application server from Google to host Open City Agora.
- Google Web Toolkit – The application is developed in Java and GWT translates the code into javascript optimized for each browser.
- Google Maps API – The maps displayed in the site are Google Maps, but also some of the layers available come from this API, like public transit, weather or traffic.
- Google Places API – Information from establishments, points of interest and other geolocated information. Users can search into Places database to add custom layers into the map.
- Google Fusion Tables – Easily create and manage big tables of data and add it over Google Maps.
- Google+ – Users can log in and share their views using their Google+ account.
- Web intents – Users can share their views also using Web intents, choosing their preferred application.
- Thanks to https://github.com/branflake2267/GWT-Maps-V3-Api for the Google Maps v3 GWT library.
We hope you like this project! You can keep updated about this project at @OpenCityAgora
