Would you all be interested in a 914 owners map/database? Options

[ThePaintedMan]

Hello all,
I've been thinking about this for a little bit. I work with GIS (Geographic Information Systems), maps and databases for my research and day job when I'm not at school. I was thinking, would it be at all useful to you guys if we had some sort of 914World database in which you could locate other members? I might try to utilize something pretty much point-and-click like Google Earth, but if it got enough use, I could look into something a bit more handy, in which you could pull up more information, including phone numbers, etc. Essentially if you were on a road trip and wanted to meet up with someone on your route, you would know that they were nearby, or if in the case of breakdowns, you could look up nearest owners, etc.

Of course the information would be voluntary and could be accessed with security so as not to broadcast people's information to the world (I mean the other one). In addition, it would be a nice visual to see where all of us are located across the U.S. The VIN database is a great start, this would be like an extension of it. Think of it like push-pins on a map but with as much or as little data as each person wants to share.

Give it some thought and let me know.

[ThePaintedMan]

I figured I wasn't the first to bring this up (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Andy, do you have an offline database already started then? I'll have to look into integrating an online point-and-click DB using something like Google Docs to allow people to automatically update it. Forgive me, most of the html coding stuff is still a bit new to me, but I should be able to get up to speed over the next few weeks. Maybe a little longer as my big comp exam is next week.

[SirAndy]

I figured I wasn't the first to bring this up (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Andy, do you have an offline database already started then? I'll have to look into integrating an online point-and-click DB using something like Google Docs to allow people to automatically update it. Forgive me, most of the html coding stuff is still a bit new to me, but I should be able to get up to speed over the next few weeks. Maybe a little longer as my big comp exam is next week.

The database is MySql, the Lat/Lng is exported to JSON when needed and the map page reads the JSON from the server using AJAX.
Everything else is Google Maps using API v2, which will become deprecated soon and should probably be converted to API v3.

Adding locations is easy, i already have code to allow members to drag&drop an icon anywhere on the map which then would be saved as their Lat/Lng.
The idea was to also support uploads of car images and some text info.

None of this is hard to do, i just don't have the time right now ...
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/type.gif)