Sybak Blog

Quite possibly could serve as the inspiration for CalMap; but I swear I didn’t see this comic before!

I am happy to announce the immediate deployment of the latest release of CalMap. The UC Berkeley mapping solution just got a lot faster, slicker, usable, and CSS-compliant.

This new version is based on the latest version of the Google Web Toolkit. In honour of their milestone 1.4 release (half a year in the making), I dub this CalMap release to be version 1.4 as well! GWT 1.4 brings us lots of performance improvements and new interface widgets which we have used to great effect. Check out the new SuggestBox (autocompletion), for example!

I invite you to play with this release, and let us know of any bugs that may have sprung up with the upgrade. An issues list is maintained at our Google Code site.

See Screenshot.

About future updates: Since GWT is now open-source and actively worked on, you might expect a new release of CalMap soon after each release of GWT. We will try to add functionality to CalMap when we have time, but the GWT release cycle is a better indicator of the frequency of CalMap updates.

Ah, if only Microsoft made an Live Local API, so we could actually use Bird’s Eye View with CalMap. Oh, so they do! But is it compatible with the Google Web Toolkit? Probably not. Maybe in the far future we’ll give it a shot. I mean, it’d be nice to have shots like this:

The Campanile

My Cisco Office Building

So, let’s get off my high horse and get back to the project of interest. How is CalMap doing?

• Han found out that Google Web Toolkit 1.4 is in beta. It looks *very* promising. Just look at the list of features! Maybe our Safari bug will magically disappear with this release. We’re holding off until aglaforge updates his Google Maps add-on; also, we’re chary to rush into YAGB (Yet Another Google Beta).
• We will go into discussions with Berkeley Web Managers sometime this summer. We think we have a lot to offer, and will work to make another awesome release before we head in.
• Google Maps now has Street View. Will this go into the API? We hope so, but currently there’s no coverage of every path on our beloved campus, so the benefit would be limited.

By the way, who remembers that Microsoft was actually first to market with “Street View” innovation? This preview was up years ago!

If you’re wondering why your bookmarks to CalMap haven’t been working, you should take a look at them again.

I’ve done a little restructuring on the server side and now, the only (correct) way to access CalMap is via the URL I always propound:

http://calmap.sybak.com/

If you attempt to simply go to www.sybak.com, you’ll be greeted with a sparse welcome page that can link you to CalMap, but has a lot of other distacting stuff as well.

You may find the other stuff interesting, but frankly, I’d stick with CalMap until something better comes along. =P