Google Maps mashup of FixMyStreet
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My latest mashup on Google Maps is a straight job of plugging an RSS feed from the national website FixMyStreet into a map.
For those who are not aware of it, FixMyStreet is an open source project which allows members of the public to report problems where they live such as graffiti, dog dirt, poor road conditions.
What's good is that you can use the site to drill down to where you live to find out what problems are there, and report them.
Each report is then passed on to the relevant local authority to tackle.
Anyway, the site helpfully provides an adaptable RSS feed which is tuned perfectly to create a Google Map.
Here's the one for where I live in the Staffordshire Moorlands, which shows 12 typical complaints from persistent offenders of dog owners who refuse to pick up the mess laid by their pets to obscene graffiti.
And if anyone's interested, I can always post a HOWTO guide, although I'm sure most people would find it relatively straightforward.
Each report is geo-coded to the place where it is reported, which is great. What is not so great is the fact that I can't tell from the map whether problems have been tackled.
After all, some of the existing complaints go back to last summer.