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web developer FAQ
How Do I Location-Enable My Website on the iPhone?
Easy. There are two APIs, so you can pick the one that's most
appropriate for your use case.
Redirector: If you have a page that can take
latitude/longitude parameters in its URL, just create a link in the format
http://lbs.tralfamadore.com/r?u=myURL. The myURL
part can be any URL you want (be sure to encode it properly, or use this simple encoder). Use the special
character sequences @lat@ and @long@
anywhere in your URL and they will be automatically replaced by the
user's location, provided he or she is using the service. If not,
or if for some reason the service can't determine his or her location,
the @lat@ and @long@ will be stripped out of
the URL. For more details, here's a How-To
guide.
W3C Geolocation API: You can also use the draft standard W3C
Geolocation API for Javascript-based geolocation by adding some
simple code to your page. If you include a <script
type="text/javascript"
src="http://lbs.tralfamadore.com/w3c-api.js"></script>
tag in your document, you'll have access to a global variable called
Locatable that implements the API defined in the spec. Here's an
example to get you started.
Do I Need To Register My Site?
No. This is an open service. However, if you've built a publicly
available location-enabled site that you'd like us to highlight, we'd
love to know about it for our featured sites page. Send us an email
(link below).
What Are Your Terms of Service?
Um, try not to piss people off. If you do, they'll stop allowing you
to see their location. Beyond that, we expect all sites that use the
service to appropriately safeguard user location data — while
the user may be willing to share it with you, they have not opted in
to let you share it with third parties. Also, if we are notified of
any sites using the service that are promoting illegal activities or
doing other very bad things, we reserve the right to permanently ban
those domains from the service at our sole discretion.
Are You Going To Charge For This?
This is a tricky question and has a lot to do with predicting the
future, but here's what we'll say for now: (1) The service will always
be free for noncommercial use. (2) If we do need to start charging
for certain uses, we'll give at least 30 days advance notice. The
whole point is to add value to your site, so we want to work out how
to best do that and still pay for things like hosting and bits of data
over the network (unfortunately, they make us pay for both the ones
and the zeros).
I Want To Learn More...
You might want to follow the developer blog for updates on
new releases, API tips and related discussion. Feel free to post your
own comments any time.
I Have A Suggestion...
We'd love to hear it! You can reach Tralfamadore headquarters by sending email.
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