Since early beta release of Firefox 3.1 there is experimental support for the experimental W3C Geolocation API.

Now Doug Turner, one of the engineers who is behind the Geolocation support in Firefox, wrote a nice background story geolocation in Firefox 3.5 (hacks.mozilla.org). A very interesting read, and it turns out that geolocation is not only for mobile devices, but also available in regular Firefox versions, using wifi or IP address mapping.

Using Firefox 3.5 or another location aware browser? Give it a try by clicking the button below, a map with your current location will be loaded…

Note:

• Firefox 3.5b4 has an annoying bug (#490046) which lets you get your location only once per run.
• Privacy is an issue, Firefox asks for permission by showing a notification bar on top of the screen. Click “Tell them” to proceed…

  

What the script does…

// call native geolocation API:
navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(callback);

// callback initializes a google map with the geo data:
function callback(position) {
    ...
    var point = new GLatLng(position.coords.latitude,
         position.coords.longitude);
    ...
}

Google provides a similar Geolocation API implementation through Gears.

Got another browser where the API works? Please leave a comment!

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I just discovered and installed a very nice WordPress plugin, WordTwit. The main purpose of this plugin is to tweet your new blog posts on Twitter, together with a link to the new blog post.

So far nothing too shocking new, but the latest version (2.0.x) of the plugin adds the option to use your own blog as url shortening and redirecting service. Think tinyurl.com, is.gd or one of the gazillion alternatives out there.

Now that is really cool. Except it didn’t work for me.

Turns out that there was a little bug if your blog is not served off the root or your domain, but a sub directory instead (which is /blog in my case).

So, a patch (shortened link, noticed?) solved this and all should be set to go now.

Oh and this post is serving as a test post for the Twitter update…

Popularity: 6%

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Actually, Twitter spammers aren’t funny at all. But sometimes they use such stupid names and avatars that you wonder who in their right mind would ever  follow them.

A common way these spammers try to get your attention, hoping you will follow them, is just start following your twitter account “at random”. Now one day I found the following two low lifers, with apparently opposite intentions, in sequence in my followers queue:

These followed me in sequence, too stupid to be true?

Now I’m pondering which one to pick, the pathetic diet promoter or the fat cheesy one?

Seriously, advice to those who create such spammy accounts: don’t waste the effort, you make me laugh at very best if I don’t outright block you.

Conversely, if you’re a human being and like to follow my sometimes random tweets, you’re still more than welcome to follow me (@jlapoutre) on Twitter!

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