New Farmers' Market Mapplet for Google Maps
I've just finished a mapplet to find all of the Los Angeles County Farmers' Markets (using the listings from farmernet.com. Here's how to use it:
1. Go to Google maps and click on "My Maps"
2. Select "Add Content"
3. To the right of the "Search Google Maps Content" button, click "Add by URL"
4. Type in http://www.preppylion.com/fm/fm.xml in the URL box
You will now have a "Los Angeles Farmers' Markets" entry under "Created by others". Clicking the check box will display the farmers' markets on your map. You can restrict the display to only markets on certain days of the week, and clicking on any of the icons brings up details about the market.
What I've learned from the map: South Los Angeles (not surprisingly) and the Valley (surprisingly) are seriously underserved by farmers markets. There's also a gaping hole through the western San Gabriel Valley south of Pasadena
If you try it, leave your comments here. It's in a solid beta state right now, but I'd like to get it rock-solid before submitting it to the google mapplet directory.
NP: NPR: 08-04-2007 Most E-Mailed Stories
WC: 50,426, ECD: 10 Nov 2007.
22 comments:
That is SO cool! Thanks for making it. Very helpful!
This is indeed v. cool! I wish it were easy to add though -- the 4-step process is a bit long.... Does it get easier once you're out of beta and submit?
Also, this farmers' market appears to be missing --
I'm also missing the Watts market and need to fix the location on Century City. Because I'm relying on farmernet.com for some of the info, I can't put Watts in until they have it, and I'd really prefer to have my location match up with what they publish on the site. I offered to do a stand-alone version of the map for their website but have had no response to my e-mail. Perhaps I should give them a call.
And yes, once I'm out of beta, if I make it into the directory, it will be a lot simpler to put the mapplet into your google map.
A great app, but you are also missing the WeHo market at Plummer Park. Other than that this is a great map!
Looks great! One correction though, you have the Mar Vista farmer's market on Grandview Ave, when it really takes place on Grandview Blvd (which is closer to Centinela).
On the West Hollywood (I'm sorry, I don't do NY-style abbreviations for L.A. places. You want SoHo, go to fucking SoHo, and take your crappy pizza with you) farmer's market, it looks like it's part of a bigger problem in that all of the Monday and Tuesday markets aren't showing up.
Click the check box? what is that?
After you've added the farmer's market mapplet to your "my Maps" page, clicking on "my maps" on the google maps page will bring up a list of custom maps. There's a check box next to "Los Angeles Farmers' Markets" that you can click on to bring up the map of markets.
Don! Supercool. I work for the Southland Farmers' Market Association (check out us and our markets at www.sfma.org) for more info on local farmers markets. Don't hate on our outdated website- I'm trying to get the old school members of my organization to understand the critical value of this big thing called the inter-web....
Umm, sfma.org is the South Florida Manufacturers' Association. That said, I would be happy to work with any farmers' market group to make this sort of map part of their website. I'll even do it on a volunteer basis.
"I don't do NY-style abbreviations for L.A. places."
Thank you for that Don. That is one of my biggest pet peeves of late on hte LA "blogosphere". My most hated is "SaMo" for idiots who want to abbreviate Santa Monica.
In terms of the downtown farmer's markets, I thought the one at 7th and Fig was on thursdays and fridays. Also, there is a much better one wedenesdays on 5th st. between Grand and Flower along the north side of the LA central Library that I frequent. Another good one downtown that I don't see on your map is the friday market in the BP plaza, on the corner of Hope and 4th street.
Great map. This would have saved me alot of trouble hunting for good CFMs when I first moved to LA.
Ya, a big problem has been using a single data source for my listings. It appears that there isn't really a single comprehensive list of all the farmer's markets out there. V2.0 is in the works (which will be a stand-alone website and also potentially feature restaurants and stores which feature local food), although I've got another mapping project under way (I won't say much other than its target audience will probably have a significant overlap with farmers' market customers) not to mention a day job and writing and music projects and a wife and a jones for books and movies all competing for time.
And just to follow up on that last comment, please feel free to include pointers (including links to websites for the markets if they exist) for any markets that aren't currently listed.
Hi Don,
I'm sorry that this is an annoying question... I love the farmer's market map and they way it groups like items. I've been searching google for 2 days on how to do something similar to no avail! Did you write the code yourself or is there a feature in google earth or maps that I'm not getting? Thanks so much.
No, not annoying at all, this is my own code. It's mostly JavaScript (although there's a bit of perl code behind the data collection and the geocoding).
http://www.preppylion.com/fm/fm.xml has all the relevant code for the mapping, and there's some stuff on google about how to do mapplets.
Thanks so much!
Does it not work for Macs?
There wasn't an "add content" button
and when i searched for the whole URL
it said it didn't exist
I LOVE the idea of a farmers market mapplet
Mark@westwoodfarmersmarket.com
Found it
It's great
my pathway was
google maps -- my maps -- BROWSE DIRECTORY -- add by URL -- (then paste in URL) ------ then it appeared
THANKS
wonderful
Just to let you know, I've got a dedicated site for farmers' market mapping (plus other local food for Los Angeles) in the works. I'll post more details when phase one goes up.
Hmm, this didn't work for me. The only place it offered for me to enter a URL was "uploading" map data from a KMZ file etc.
Well, I am also on a Mac, and I don't know if that was an issue.
Great idea tho.
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