WordPress Plugin: I Am Here

Download latest Version (1.0a)

Changelog

• 1.0a (20/07/08): initial version (alpha)

Description

I Am Here is a WordPress plugin that uses Fire Eagle, Yahoo! Maps API, Google Weather API, GeoNames and, optionally, World Time Engine to display information about your current location in a widget in the sidebar. To be a little bit more visual, it…

• displays that information in the sidebar and
• if JavaScript is available, it displays a map with your current location as an overlay when clicking on “Show Map”

Requirements

• Fire Eagle Account
• Yahoo! Application ID
• PHP 5.2.3 or higher (for Fire Eagle/OAuth)
• Widget functionality must be enabled in WordPress

Functionality

The plugin retrieves your current location from Fire Eagle and, based on this, does the following:

• Plots your location on a map (using Yahoo! Maps)
• Retrieves 10 Wikipedia articles for Points Of Interest that are close to your location (using GeoNames)
• Retrieves local weather information (using Google Weather API)
• Displays local time (using World Time Engine) (optional)

Installation

1. Download the zip-file and extract the content to wp-content\plugins.
2. Login to your WordPress AdminArea and activate the plugin in “Plugins > Plugins”
3. Go to “Settings > I Am Here” (for WP Version < 2.6: "Options > I Am Here”)and follow the on-screen instructions
4. It will first take you to Fire Eagle for authorization
5. After that is done, Fire Eagle will redirect you back to your WordPress Admin Panel
6. In here, enter the appropriate API key information
7. After hitting “Save Options”, the page should be refreshed and you should see information about your location displayed in the Admin Panel (map, weather and time)

Also, for making use of Yahoo! Maps on your page, make sure you include the appropriate call to the Yahoo! Maps AJAX API somewhere on your page, like

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://api.maps.yahoo.com/ajaxymap?v=3.8&amp;appid=<your appid here"></script>

Because I am using YUI, you would also need the appropriate components from there:

<script type='text/javascript' src='http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.5.2/build/yahoo-dom-event/yahoo-dom-event.js'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.5.2/build/container/container-min.js'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.5.2/build/connection/connection-min.js"></script> 

Customization

In the Admin Panel of the plugin, which can be found at the backend in “Settings > I Am Here”, you can set a couple of parameters, which are self-explanatory, I guess.

For styling problems, I would need to refer you to the YUI Library, because I am using YUI Panel to display the map overlay. So if you run into problems with misalignment, the answer is most likely there.

Tested on

• WordPress 2.2.1, 2.6

• Firefox 2.0x
• IE 6

Credits

Initially, I had not thought about the idea of, in addition to the users location, also plotting other Points Of Interest on the map. Simon Willison beat me to it with his wikinear.com :-). Oh well, thanks Simon, great idea!