Positive Puffbox PR

Martin Stabe has written a piece in the Press Gazette about our Puffbox Google Map Mashup. This is the journalists’ industry newspaper so it hits our target market perfectly. Someone once said there is no bad PR. It’s as well this is good PR!

Sky News use Puffbox map in weather warnings

Sky News have reported on the heavy rain across Britain and used our map mashup to show some of the worst hit areas. This particular application shows the polygon feature – they have highlighted an area south of Rotherham which could be affected if the Ulley Dam bursts.

This is a great example of a breaking news story shown to good effect on the Puffbox map application.

Google Map Mashup Demo

We’ve now put a demo of our mashup on the Puffbox website. It shows most of the functionality of the map including interactive sidebar and the backend includes the polygon creator I mentioned in my last post. More details are available on the Puffbox website.

Increased Functionality for Google Map Mashup

I’ve been working away at the Google Map mashup tool that I developed for Puffbox and have added some functionality to it. Editors were already able to add / edit / delete points on a map with custom markers and custom information windows as well as run multiple maps. Now I have added polygon functionality. This means that an editor can draw custom polygonal shapes and place them on the map (useful for highlighting certain areas). A map can have multiple polygons in a range of colours, with or without solid borders. Editors can switch the polygons on and off for the end user, change colours and even add or delete vertices on the polygons (i.e. give the shape more corners or take them away). All this is done by simply clicking on the map to create corners or clicking a corner marker to delete it. It works on Firefox, IE and Safari and can get an interactive map with points and areas highlighted up and running in a matter of minutes.

Puffbox map reaps results – murder suspect arrested

The Puffbox map application that Sky News is using as part of its Crime Uncovered Week has helped bring about the arrest of a murder suspect at large. So far our first project has been picked up by a large satellite television network, been the subject of several journalism blogs and made the streets safer by taking a suspected murderer off them. Who said you have to start small?

I have a basic example of our Google map on my website. Google are really going for it with their maps – the latest thing is to have street level 360 degree photos built in to the map. They’ve only covered 5 US cities so far but the results are fantastic.

Skymapping goes live

Today our Google map application went live with the start of the Sky News Crime Uncovered week. They’ve used it to show Britain’s most wanted criminals. The really clever stuff is going on behind the scenes where journalists with no specific technical expertise can add items to the map using a WYSIWYG content management system that I wrote with a little help from my brother over at Puffbox.

The Puffbox word is spreading….

We haven’t even had our first product go live and already we have a couple of mentions in the blogosphere! Journalism.co.uk have picked up the story here, as has Craig McGinty in his blog here. There’s an exciting week ahead for Puffbox.

Puffbox.com – Brothers in Arms

After a few years of my brother badgering me I finally gave in and decided to do some work for him in his new venture (soon to be our new venture – possibly). The web consultancy he has set up is called Puffbox and I guess I am head programmer at the minute. We seem to have got off the mark with a fairly major client and a rather clever little back end for a map application.

It will hopefully be launching next week – there are more details on the Puffbox website and my brother’s blog. I always knew it would be useful to have a brother in the media / politics.

Why you shouldn’t drink and drive – follow up

I’ve noticed my previous post has got a bit of traffic recently so I thought I’d do a bit of a follow up. I work as a firefighter in Belfast and thankfully I haven’t had to deal with too many road traffic collisions (RTCs). I’m not sure what the statistics are but there are a lot more crashes out in the countryside than in the city. This means that any drink driving incident could happen in a remote place i.e. somewhere it will take a while for fire and ambulance crews to get to.

There is a thing called the “Golden Hour” which is the hour immediately after a life threatening trauma occurs. If a trauma victim gets to significant medical care (i.e. hospital) within that hour, they have a far higher likelihood of survival. Outside that hour and your chances fall dramatically. If we have to cut people out of car wrecks we are trained to do so as quickly and safely as possible but the clock is always ticking.

Drinking and driving leads to accidents. The bigger the accident, the longer it could take to get someone out and the shorter the time left from the Golden Hour. Is it worth the risk? If you have to think about the answer to that, you shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel.

Which watch?

I just finished a wee section on my website which shows which watch is on duty for the current 2-2-4 duty system used by the NIFRS (Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service). It works for every year from 2004 to 2020. Feel free to check it out at http://www.garethdickson.net/javascript-ajax/.

For those of you who are web-development-minded, I have used PHP, Javascript and AJAX to update it. Haven’t been able to test it on every type of browser but the code I used for the AJAX claims to be browser-proof. We shall see…