Remote Sensing Tools

I get this question quite a bit. Conceivably? Yes. How would I go about doing this? Sticking to standards, and not using others’ proprietary methods. Why? Umm, standards exist because everyone can adopt them into their flavor of application — which is to say, that it may not be the best thing on the block, but if you’re looking for standards compliant mark-up that validates for a web site, and you’re looking for something you can implement in a scalable manner, then sticking to standards are your best option at all times. (That, and by sticking to standards, you limit the amount of authority any proprietary or competitive organization has against you in your use or implementations.)

So let’s tackle this idea. How would I do this?

First, get yourself familiarized with the Geo Meta Data tags in XHTML/XML/RDF. These are standards compliant, and in terms of what will be required for basic informational and GIS mapping of your site — about all you’ll ever need. Remember — your web site is an organic ‘thing’, it has the capacity to evolve in time, especially in the case of a WordPress blogging platform, where information that you present is constantly ‘fluid’ and rarely ’static’. And even if it becomes relatively ’static’ based on its location, that’s the entire point! Mapping is about association — GIS is about association. The rest is just tying it all in and visualization and other do-dads can come from the added benefit of tagging everything appropriately.

Imagine now — you have a plug-in in WordPress that allows you to set your global Geo Meta tags to your coordinates. This is where the entire site exists in geo-space. Let’s say this plug-in has a page that allows you to input and save those requirements in the database. Now, every index header of your site will dynamically spit out the appropriate geo meta data that represents your site into the head of the document, which every search engine or aware application can scour, and as long as they’re searching for it (meaning, they find those tags relevant in their algorithms and index your site accordingly, etc).

Imagine now — you’re able to automagically input some function into your About page, which spits out the relevant Google Map based on the coordinates you’ve submitted, to add a nifty visualization about your site’s location. Very useful for most to any web site, especially a business site — especially a small-business web site.

Imagine now — in your WordPress Post or Page editor, there’s an added option of including Geo Meta values specifically for a post or page — and that data is in turn saved into the database, associated with said post or page. Imagine you have a check-box option to include a Google Map that pinpoints that location on a map. Again, another visualization option.

Imagine something more elaborate — especially in regards to geo meta data being read in the headers of all the graphics or photos on your site, within a post, a page, etc. Now there are distinct subsets that can be parsed and utilized to extend geo-awareness within the content of your web site, and potentially utilized to generate even greater visualization options.

Imagine now, with all that data stored in your database, you can take it all and generate a Geo-based sitemap as a KML structure, for ultimate visualization and data representation in Google Earth or Maps.

Imagine imagine imagine. Now your entire web site could be scaled to demonstrate the power of compliant standards in the goodness that is our geospatial reality. It could be utilized in a variety of ways, and totally depending on how elaborate you care to have your site represented. It can become more organic as a mechanism if you allow it — and most importantly, because you’re using compliant standards that exist, such as Geo Meta and KML, etc, the rest is simply using an application that should be adhering to standards in order to visualize and make analysis possible as that last aspect of the entire thing it is you wish to accomplish with your geo-aware web site.

These are just simple ideas — but the entire point is, instead of asking me, just do it. Build it, and they will come, as that line in that movie goes — or something.