Suggestion: push-pin map for local groups?

[Gareth]

Apropos the recent thread about finding help to get to advanced level, I realised the list of geographic areas and the list of towns isn't particularly user friendly when someone is searching for a local group and/or a driving instructor. I followed the link for one local group and the equivalent informational page for RoADAR was displayed, and that was hardly any better. The only difference was the inclusion of a UK clickable map, but that only selected regions of the UK.

How difficult would it be to use Google Maps with different push-pins displayed for IAM or RoADAR local groups, and for driving instructors? I'm thinking that being able to select only to display driving instructors that train to advanced level, for example, would really help people find what they are looking for, especially as Google Maps is zoomable, and so it would be easy to focus on one location and see what training resources are available in the area.

[martine]

Good idea but it's quite a time consuming job (IAM has 250 groups...ish) ...are you offering?

The IAM website does show groups on a regional map but I agree it would be good to show IAM/ROSPA/ADIs all together.

[Gareth]

Good idea but it's quite a time consuming job (IAM has 250 groups...ish) ...are you offering?

I don't mind helping with the data - it's surely not much more than entering each appropriate town in Google Maps and saving the reference to that location.

The parts I know nothing about are using the Google Maps API to show pins on a map, and setting up so that a map with additional data can be served from a website. When I briefly looked into this in the past, it appeared that the website that the application was developed upon has to be the same as the one which is finally used - something to do with getting a certificate from Google to be able to do this. Anyway, I know next to nothing about that side of things.

[Darren]

I've done some work with the maps API, I find it doesn't work well under firefox. The group list on this site needs an update, if you are happy to help it would be appreciated. I can email you the current data if you like. When I get a few minutes will re-look at the maps API and see what I can do with it.

[crr003]

frappr.com.

Here's an example:
http://www.frappr.com/vx220