open(‘http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=’ + q + ‘&output=’ + format + ‘&key=’ + key) {|f|
f.each_line {|line|
result = line.split(‘,’)
}
}

The output option is nice. I default to ‘csv’ which ruby handles easely since I am only interested in the longitude and latitude, but you can get XML and JSON.

The rest of the script is just picking up command line options and output. Which by the way, it looks like Ruby could really use a nice command line options interface. It has 2, but it would be nice to have something built in that is stupid simple. GetoptLong is identical to get_optlong(), and and OptionParser seems to be the new kid on the block, but the documentation is horrid. Or maybe its just too rubish for my understanding at this time. But back to the topic…
Geotagging appears to be a growing trend, but it appears that there is no standard format of specifyinc this information. Any clues out there of what are the best options to geotag pages? Or even blog posts (that would be cooler then a page since you can write a blog from almost anywhere).

Update:

Interesting links:
geocoder.us
geocoder.ca
feedmap
plazes

“User-Generated Content” is an irreparably ugly and broken phrase. First, we’re people, not “users”. Second, people write and speak and design and compose and sing and play and build and earn and pay; machines “generate”. Third, it’s words and pictures and sound and money, not “content”. The trouble is, we need labels; short ones that still say something. Say, contribution and experience? The Net (really, truly) is the sum of billions of contributions from millions of people, and that’s all that’s interesting about it. People contribute at the edge, and experience the contributions at the edge. (Experience, not consume; the difference is obvious). The Net itself’s a contribution, by humanity to humanity, the engine of future contribution and experience. The Net’s not finished of course; contributing and experiencing, both of them, are too hard and awkward and slow.

Decisions are temporary so make the call and move on. If decisions aren’t temporary it’s not the decision’s fault, it’s yours (or your organizations, or your red tape, or…).

Done. Start to think of it as a magical word. When you get to done it means something’s been accomplished. A decision has been made and you can move on. Done means you’re building momemtum.

But wait, what if you screw up and make the wrong call? It’s ok. This isn’t heart surgery, it’s a web app. As we keep saying, you’ll likely have to revisit features and ideas multiple times during the process anyway. No matter how much you plan you’re likely to get about half of it wrong anyway. So don’t do the “paralysis through analysis” thing. That only slows progress and saps morale.

Instead, value the importance of moving on and moving forward. Get in the rhythm of making decisions. Make a quick, simple call and then go back and change that decision if it doesn’t work out. Give yourself time boxes that force you to make up your mind within a set amount of time.

Accept that decisions are temporary. Accept that mistakes will happen and realize it’s no big deal as long as you can correct them quickly. Execute, build momentum, and move on.

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During the Bubble, a lot of people predicted that startups would outsource their development to India. I think a better model for the future is David Heinemeier Hansson, who outsourced his development to a more powerful language instead. A lot of well-known applications are now, like Basecamp, written by just one programmer. And one guy is more than 10x cheaper than ten, because (a) he won’t waste any time in meetings, and (b) since he’s probably a founder, he can pay himself nothing.

Then via Jason from 37Signals:

Why toss an app over the pond to a programmer body shop in India when you can do it here at home with one guy? That’s what Ruby on Rails lets you do. And that’s one of the reasons we open-sourced it. Everyone can benefit. We not only want to make software that’s dead simple to use, we want to make tools that make it dead simple to write software.

Of particular interest are these bits:

“We prefer many small frameworks over one heavyweight framework.”
…
“Because the bigger the framework becomes, the greater the chances that it will want to do too much, the bigger the learning curves become, and the more difficult it becomes to maintain it.”

This makes sense, and it contrasts what I’ve experienced. However, doing this is far more difficult then it sounds. Smaller frameworks allows for more choice and plug-ability, but you have to have an intelligent and productive team to understand how to take advantage of this flexibility without getting bogged down with all of the choices.

On the other hand, a larger framework that does everything can have its merits, especially when there is a team of people that need to use it. It creates conformity. However, to me this is just an initial benefit. As the framework grows in complexity and strays from its core functions, the less benefit it starts to produce. As Eric states, it becomes harder to maintain, and harder to learn. But when do we know this is happening? Is there a clear indicator?

Stopping and restarting containers to add functionality is something that I can no longer accept. Being able to make changes to functionality without recompiling or repackaging is also something that i can no longer accept. Starting to sound like Ruby eh?

In today’s world you need to be able to respond to change ever more quicly then before, regardless of how often times such a request that causes a change is completly insane. If your customer needs a change, you better be able to give it to them or they’ll find someone else who isn’t so stuck up in their “properness” to do it.

This doesn’t mean that I believe it is ok to abandon proper practices and approaches, but I do think that there is more that I as a Java developer can do to allow my applications to adapt to change quicker.

Integrating dynamic scripting languages that run on the JVM like Rhino, Groovy, JRuby or Jython, is one way that I believe this can be achieved. For example, why write a struts action in a java class? Why can’t this be done with a script?

The good news? Others have thought of this. Struts has an extension to support BSF, Spring has Groovy support as an alternative way to wire up dependencies (tres cool). A little bit of this, plus a good dose of convention over configuration, may just go a long way.

Or maybe i should just use Ruby

It is also possible, to some degree, to re-use these meta-framework pieces and use them on new applications. What is often lacking is a good starting point. So much so that I would bet most teams just start from scratch for each new project while still using pretty much the same pieces.

If one can find a way to re-use this meta-framework and apply it to different applications, then re-usability is achieved, and the ability to predict time and costs for particular projects becomes less of a variant.

I decided to start with Java since that’s what I know the best, and from what I already know about RoR, I know i can start just by typing:

rails <project_name>

With Java, well… wait a second, why can’t I just do the same? Let’s see to do what I have in mind, i need to:

• Set up a project in Eclipse
• Set up an Ant build.xml
• Set up a project directory structure
• Download the dependencies I need
  • Hibernate
  • Xdoclet
  • log4j
  • commons-logging
  • commons-collections

etc, etc, etc.

A lot of this stuff is very repetitive. Maybe what I should do first is create a project that lets me get started quickly. In fact, AppFuse from Matt Raible is intended to do this. However, it’s too much for me. It is designed towards new developers to J2EE, and it makes some good assumptions towards architecture, frameworks, etc. However for me personally, it’s too much. Often times most of my projects start the same way, which makes me think that what I really should do in order to shorten the distance between idea to execution, is to make the starting step be the shortest possible. Which is one of RoR’s biggest strenghts so far.

By the way, i still haven’t started on anything Maybe the issue is procastination…