Looks really interesting. The first suggestion I would make is to specify that this is a "California only" site. As a non-Californian I am frequently irked when I come to a site, try and search for my location, and eventually find out this "Great general resource" is great if I live in CA.
I would say that definitely moving to a "slippy map" like OpenLayers would be the best first thing you could do. The UI is become much more understood and really promotes users to "explore" the map, rather than just seeing a dot but not wanting to click because of load times. It would also be nice for users to be able to save/email/print their planned trip from your planner so that they can take it with them (on mobile phone, handheld. laptop, paper) Do you have the park maps themselves? That would be a nice thing to Overlay (especially in OpenLayers) and also provide for printing/planning. What about maybe linking to photo sites, like Flickr, for people to tag: parkinfo parinfo:park=temkototpark so you can then show photos of the parks for someone wanting to know more about them. Lastly, what about publishing park locations in GeoRSS/KML for aggregation and subscribing by users. They can then have fun putting them into GoogleEarth, or into their own Maps via GeoRSS. Andrew On 11/17/06, Jennifer Strahan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hello Geowankers, I work for a non-profit organization in San Francisco that provides GIS/Cartography services for other non-profits. I've joined the list recently and wanted to see if you all might have some suggestions for improving a site that we are working on: www.parkinfo.org. We have a very detailed parks and open space database that we've been working on for years. It includes everything from small tot lots to state parks to conservation easements. The Bay Area Open Space Council has partnered with us to produce an interactive mapping application that will help broaden access to parks. The application includes search by address/city/zip and will also include links to a trip planner for parks that are within a mile of a transit stop. We are working with a local transportation agency (MTC) to include all of the parks in their landmarks database so that park names are recognized as destinations in their trip planner. We've recently finished a beta version of the application www.parkinfo.org using MapServer/Chameleon. In general we are pleased with the functionality, but we think that the performance is too slow. The DM Solutions group is planning on integrating OpenLayers into their next release of Chameleon, so this may help our performance issues. Questions for the list: 1. If you were going to re-do this application, what technology do you think would be the best for performance and ease of use? 2. Do you think that the user interface is intuitive for a general audience? 3. Can you think of any other features we are missing that you would like to see included? Thanks for your comments and suggestions. Regards, Jennifer Jennifer Strahan (Shanks) GreenInfo Network - 1996-2006: A Decade of Mapping the Public Interest 116 New Montgomery Street Suite 738 San Francisco CA 94105 PH: (415)979-0343 x306 Fax: 415-979-0371 Web: www.greeninfo.org _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
-- Andrew Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] 42.4266N x 83.4931W http://highearthorbit.com Northville, Michigan, USA _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
