Travel Blog Map

Jauntlet is Back

2010-11-11T19:59:00.001-05:00

Wow! I can’t believe the last post was three years ago. Facebook was just opening its API and I ported Jauntlet to it. I started creating other apps, some of which are still on http://www.tomsapps.com, and they got so much usage that I began to neglect Jauntlet.

Now I’ve finally returned to my true love, Jauntlet. It’s just been ported to my PHP site, so now it will be easier to improve it.

A lot has happened in the past three years in the location based social media space. Check-in sites like Foursquare and GPS-enabled phones are making LBS mainstream. This is a natural fit for Jauntlet and the immediate improvements will be integration with these services.

Facebook API

2007-06-04T18:52:00.000-04:00

Facebook opening its platform up with an API is a huge event for products like Jauntlet. People could already add it to their mini-feeds with a click before, but this will allow deep integration with Facebook.

I made the first version at http://apps.facebook.com/jauntlet/. It just adds the Jauntlet to your profile. I hope to expand Jauntlet on the Facebook platform soon.

It is a very particular and complex API. There were not many wrappers for C#.NET, so I actually created PHP site for this. To do it, I had to enable a lot of new services for Jauntlet, which is great if anyone want to build something else on it.

Travel Planning

2007-05-24T18:09:00.002-04:00

I’m very excited about the next set of travel planning features to be added to Jauntlet. The origin of Jauntlet was in enabling travel sharing, but I realized people are putting in their complete itinerary in Jauntlet. This is more information than most travel sites have. With affiliate programs, it’s easy to use this information to provide convenient services to plan travels. The people at Kayak have been very helpful with this.

I think facilitating travel planning could be even more popular than travel sharing. Everyone who travels needs to plan, but not everyone feels the need to share it.

New Features

2007-04-11T18:03:00.000-04:00

Based on user feedback, I’ve added new functionality to Jauntlet.

There is now easy one click adding to Blogger, TypePad, MySpace, and Facebook.
The colors on both the HTML and Flash Jauntlets are customizable.
There is new map-only Jauntlet.
You can now create Jauntlets with more than one destination per day.

How to Add Comments to the Main Blog Page of Blogger

2007-02-27T19:13:00.000-05:00

The new version of Blogger added many useful features, but it removed one nice capability that the old version had. It is no longer possible to display comments on the main blog page; these are only accessibly on an individual post page.

Luckily, it’s possible to use a little AJAX to scrape the individual post pages and display the comments on the main page. You could also use the RSS feed, but it doesn’t contain the links to the commenters’ profiles.

To do this you need to edit your HTML template. Click “Edit HTML” and make sure the box “Expand Widgets Template” is checked. Now, copy and paste everything into a text editor like Note Pad to make things easier.

The first step is the find the place where the template inserts the comments on the individual post page. It looks something like:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
 <b:include data='post' name='comments'/>
</b:if>

Modify it like this:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
 <span id='startcomments'></span>       
 <b:include data='post' name='comments'/>
 <span id='endcomments'></span>
<b:else/>
 <div expr:id='"comment"+data:post.id'>
 <!-- add something here to display if the AJAX fails -->
 </div>
 <script language='javascript' type='text/javascript'>
 showCommentsPost("<data:post.id/>","<data:post.url/>");
 </script>
</b:if>

This does several things. On the individual post page, it inserts tags to make it easy to find the comments. On the main page, it adds a div for the comments and a JavaScript function to display the comments. You can put something in the div to display before the comments load or if the AJAX fails.

Now, just add the following JavaScript just before the </head> tag of the template. This basically retrieves each individual post page, finds the comments, and inserts it on the main page.

<script language='javascript' type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[

function getXMLDoc() {
// returns a browser specific xml request object
 var x = false;
 if(window.XMLHttpRequest) {
  try {
   x = new XMLHttpRequest();
   x.overrideMimeType("text/xml");
  } catch(e) { }
 } else if(window.ActiveXObject) {
  try {
   x = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
  } catch(e) {
   try {
    x = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
   } catch(e) { }
  }
 }
 return x;
}

function showCommentsPost(postid,posturl) {
// gets individual post page and inserts comments in main page
 try {
  var request = getXMLDoc();
  if (request) {
   request.open("GET", posturl, true);
   request.onreadystatechange = function(){
    if(request.readyState == 4){
     var s = new String (request.responseText);
     var ss = "<span id='startcomments'>"+"</span>"
     var si = s.indexOf(ss);
     ss = "<span id='endcomments'>"+"</span>"
     var ei = s.indexOf(ss);
     document.getElementById("comment"+postid).innerHTML = s.substring(si+32,ei);
    }
   };
   request.send("");
  }
 } catch(e) { }
}

//]]>
</script>

Finally, copy and paste the whole template from your text editor into the Blogger Edit Template box and click “Save Template”.

That’s it! You should now be able to display comments on your blog’s main page just like they are here.

Easy Blogger Third Party Page Element Adding

2007-02-05T13:27:00.000-05:00

The new Blogger has implemented an easy way for people to add third party tools as page elements in layouts. This should help sites like Jauntlet.

http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=53219&topic=8933

New Blogger

2007-01-08T14:46:00.000-05:00

Blogger has changed. Hopefully Jauntlet will still work.

New Post

2006-09-28T10:36:00.000-04:00

Haven't posted in a while, but Jauntlet now has photos from Flickr and over three million destinations.

New Data

2006-09-02T20:23:00.000-04:00

Well, I switched to government database. It’s much more comprehensive, but has other problems. It’s not normalized. Most cities do not have a region. Given that there are so many cities, I had to make the interface different, and I think it adds a layer of complexity. But so many travel destination are little beach or ski towns that weren’t in the other data, I had to do it.

Technorati

2006-08-21T15:33:00.000-04:00

Technorati Profile

The Missing Link

2006-04-22T20:43:00.000-04:00

The most difficult thing right now is getting links. I think once people know about Jauntlet, they'll use it.

Things like this might help:
travel

Yahoo!

2006-04-16T16:13:00.000-04:00

Yahoo has answered my prayers, but ruined my weekend. They’ve put a world map into their new Flash API. I’ve added it to Jauntlet and now need to consider if using Yahoo’s AJAX API is better than Google. They have cities and main roads globally while Google only has country outlines. It would be a bit of work to redo everything though.

Get Your Own Free Travel Plan and Map for Blogger from Jauntlet

Off To a Good Start

2006-04-14T20:49:00.000-04:00

Well, I’ve “launched” Jauntlet, which is my latest personal project. It’s basically a tool for travelers that lets them include a map and plan of their travels on websites like this as well as others like MySpace and FaceBook. I think it will fill a niche. There are lots of travel blog sites, but people already have their main blog and don’t want to start a new one just for when they travel. Plus, you can see who else is going or living where you are, and that should be fun. But first people have to sign up. Getting people to use it will be the most difficult part. I think it’s really a matter of marketing because the product itself is great. This blog is part of that.

Here’s an example of what you can do with Jauntlet: