New Post

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

New Data

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

Technorati Profile

The Missing Link

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!

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

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: