I’ve recently been engaged by a client to write the mobile applications for his website (more on that in later posts) which plots ‘points of interest’ on a map. That probably sounds a little familiar as I have already developed the FillLPG for Android application which displays the location of LPG stations around the UK – and increasingly into Europe.
Working with mapping applications is always a challenge, but an enjoyable one for me as I find maps such an engaging medium. One recurring challenge for me is that I don’t speak ‘Latitude and Longitude’ so when I need to test my code, e.g. load the map for a certain location and perform a ‘nearby’ search, I have to determine some suitable coordinates.
There are a few online tools out there but I always use one of a couple that I’ve found to be useful
If you want to find the coordinates of a specific location then you just need to pan & zoom the map until the location is in view and then simply click it with the mouse.
Couldn’t be easier really and this is all I need most of the time.
Using the ‘Lat/Lng to Address’ search it is possible to zoom into a map, select a location (probably a house or business) and resolve the full address by clicking the ‘Load’ button. I’ve found this feature to be very powerful – for development and personal use (sometimes you just need a postcode for your SatNav).