I’m currently building an iPhone app that requires the use of maps whilst offline. Caching Google map tiles and using them offline was out of the question due to their terms & conditions so I went ahead and created my own component.
First off, I wanted the map to look good. I love the style of this world map & pin by Thom var der Weerd but unfortunately it isn’t quite geographically accurate. I did some research on mapping and found this great article outlining some of the concepts and math behind locating a point on a map using latitude and longitude coordinates. I was then able to go ahead and create an accurate map conforming to the Mercator projection, using the colors and texture from Thom’s world map.
The component is available on Github, free for all to use, although the functionality is currently very minimal.
It’s June 20th, and in one month exactly I will be saying goodbye to the world of normal working hours and private health care. Yep - I’m leaving my job here at Viadeo to embrace a new challenge. One that will no doubt be very difficult but has the potential to be very rewarding.
The last 3 years here have been a whirl. I moved from London to Paris specifically for this job in the summer of 2009. Through practice and observation I have acquired many skills, much knowledge, and had great fun along the way. I now feel as ready as I’ll ever be to launch my own company.
What will I be doing? Well without going into too many details it’s an online platform for discovering, promoting, and sharing cool products & services. It doesn’t sound too groundbreaking - there’s obviously a lot more to it, but that’s all we need to know for now.
I’ll be posting regularly along the way :-)
"
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
"
— “The Crazy Ones”, from Apple’s “Think Different” campaign in 1997
"It’s often easy to forget that fundamentally, the social web allows us to do nothing new. We’ve been doing it for thousands of years."
— Josua Porter
