We recently changed the format of the XML files that the map interface uses to display trips. While it is not really a user-visible change, it will open up new possibilities for viewing and exporting your travel journals.

The format we use now is GeoRSS — Geographically Encoded Objects for RSS feeds. GeoRSS is a standard for encoding geographical information in regular RSS (or Atom) news feeds. We implemented the GeoRSS GML variant, using an Atom feed. Each trip is represented as a news feed so that feed entries correspond to trip entries. In addition to specifying a location for each trip entry, GeoRSS also allows us to encode the GPS track.

Here is an example of a GeoRSS feed:
http://triptracker.net/trip/727/georss.
And the resulting map:
http://triptracker.net/trip/727/map.

Since this is a just an extension of a news feed, you may also open it in your favorite feed reader. As GeoRSS gains recognition, we expect more feed readers to understand and display the geographical tags as well.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 23rd, 2006 at 4:48 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.