Coredump

I’ve been scratching my head on how to create a Google Map mashup for the Pinoy Farmers ICT Roadshow. It turns out I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel since smarter people have done it first.

I give to you, GeoPlugin and GeoMashup, two amazing plugins to add geo info and create a mashup for blog posts. See it at work at the Pinoy Farmers Internet blog. (Not much to look at yet, but once the Roadshow rolls off, our bloggers will be adding posts so the readers can follow the show.)

We finally have a schedule for the ICT Caravan. The Caravan will kick off on March 26 in Northern and Central Luzon, and will run until May 12 where the final leg in Bicol.

I’ve plotted the stop-overs in Google Maps. It’s still very rough, as I still have to plug in more info as they come through. I’m thinking of harvesting them from status updates that have been placed in a wiki, though I still don’t know how to do that.

Here’s an expansion of my previous post on the ICT caravan. Incidentally, I’ve blogged about it in our very aptly named “PFI Blog“. (Heh. We’ll think of a sexier name, promise.)

The Caravan, which will run from March to April, will feature the following:

• Cyber farm forum (multisite videoconferencing)
• Rice science and technology updates
• Agricultural videos
• Introduction to computers and the internet
• Pinoy Farmers’ Internet
• Enrolment in the Open Academy’s Virtual Classroom
• Text messaging for farming tips
• Experts online
• Rice Knowledge Bank
• Other important agricultural websites
• Online trading and real-time price watch of agricultural products
• Knowledge products for sale
• Maps and directories
• Last-mile connectivity solutions
• Open source software

More details in the website.

Very busy with the Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture. We are organizing an “ICT caravan”, a road tour of sorts that will span the archipelago (naks!), to spread ICT and IT-based agriculture knowledge to extension workers. This will happen in March.

The caravan will have five legs: Ilocos region, Southern Tagalog, Bicol region, Northern Mindanao, and Davao provinces. Five buses from the DOST SEI (their Mobile ICT classroom) will be equipped with internet connection — either through WeRoam or via WiFi in nearby internet cafes — and travel to different municipalities where one-day training on basic computer skills will be held.

We’re currently looking for sponsors — we’re eyeing local government agencies and telcos — to cover part of the costs. The Pinoy Farmers Internet will feature a day-to-day journal of the caravan. We will be assigning bloggers per team so they can post images and thoughts on the web. We will be teaching extension workers to blog, too, and how to use our wiki.

I’m thinking of using my stillborn Google Maps API-enabled AgriInfo map to set out the route and provide some interesting points as part of our coverage. Right now, I’m working on a decent XML generator to plug in the geodata with the resulting RSS feeds from the blog posts. I can then use the resulting XML to map out points (or routes) using the Google Maps API. (I know, I may be talking through my butt here — there might be a simpler way — but right now, I’m inclined to follow this approach. Either that or use a Drupal flexinode feed.)

Apparently, I goofed.

When I visited my Google Maps API project this morning, the map was missing! Thanks to Migs Paraz for pointing that out.

In the previous version, I added a few div items that shouldn’t be there (in the spirit of separating content, presentation and behavior in the code). I cleaned the code a bit: completely separating the Javascript code to another file so the HTML will not be cluttered, and added an if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) check.

The XML is still as it is. Will have to consult with the content developers on what other info to include. And I’m still not sure about the GPS locations because I just gathered the samples from Global Gazetteer Version 2.1. Will have to check with the GIS people on Monday.

For now, here it is. It’s really not that much: there’s a list of interesting points on the left that you can click to display info on the map. I’ll be adding the relevant information soon, such as the websites, statistics and related links. The points, by the way, are some areas where our project is currently working in.