HTML/PHP Timezone Feed Google Chart Map Tutorial
Yesterday we started on our journey into the “when” and “where” of our new timezone web application when we presented HTML/PHP Timezone Feed Primer Tutorial as shown below. Today we delve into more sources of data to augment yesterday’s GoMashup (thanks) source. And “why” is that? Well, we want to further contextualize the “where” of the web application by offering to show a representative map of a locality within the relevant Timezone on a map of the Earth. To do this, we can use the Google Charts Map Chart, as we’ve discussed earlier. That is the “what” (we use) about the scenario, but “how” about the “how”? We need a data source that links Timezone names with geographical latitude and longitude information, which the GoMashup data does not contain. Luckily, the wonderful Wikipedia came to the rescue with this really really useful link, so yet again, thanks Wikipedia!
The use of maps can help contextualize where we live and in any given Timezone of interest, you will find an east/west commonality for Timezone places, with possibly a lot of variation in north/south to places that have a common Timezone. As you probably learnt in school geography, this can mean a vast difference in climate from the cold polar regions (of really high or really low latitudes) to the warm and humid equatorial regions near the equator at zero degrees latitude.
But people of the same Timezone, may, for instance, share …
- pet cat feeding times
- pet dog walking times
- dinner meal times
- start work and end work times
- ceremony times
We here in Sydney (with our cats) share “time” with people in Vladivostok, in Russia (with their cats) for instance. Am sure, though, that these cats are not sharing any fur coats?!
Again, today’s work has that special treat of combining “Where” and “When” in its themes, and think you may find it interesting to again try a live run, and or peruse the code as per …
- HTML/Javascript source code daylight_saving_time.html (changed from yesterday as per this link) … supervising … but needing …
- PHP source code daylight_saving_time.php (changed from yesterday as per this link) … because the recent “Client Pre-emptive Iframe” thoughts don’t work so well for the cross-domain requirements that GoMashup’s RSS feed and Wikipedia data presents to us
We hope you again enjoy thinking about time and space and maps … and maybe some things that we all share in common.
Previous relevant HTML/PHP Timezone Feed Primer Tutorial is shown below.
HTML/PHP Timezone Feed Primer Tutorial
Today we delve into timezone web applications using RSS feed data, in our case courtesy of Gomashup … thanks.
Maybe you are good with timezones, as you make a lot of International phone calls, and get used to it, but there are a lot of exceptions to the geographical (ie. longitudinal position) logic for several reasons like …
- daylight saving
- political decisions (especially around the International Date Line (180°E and 180°W) … ie. the opposite longitude to Greenwich (as of Greenwich Mean Time), which is at at 0°E and 0°W)
… plus we all know that “when you are having fun” … well, you know what we mean?!
So all those interruptions to the longitudinal way the time should be, in any given longitudinal place on Earth, needs to get a name, so the international convention gives a Region/PlaceIdentifier type of TimeZoneID, and so, even though we offer a finder of your TimeZoneID from our web application today, don’t count on finding it that way, because the places used as TimeZoneID PlaceIdentifiers are sometimes quite obscure, or at least to those “not in the know” I guess … but my favourite so far has been “America/Indiana/Tell_City”, as I hadn’t heard of Tell City before doing this web application … glad to meet you in code, Tell City, Indiana, USA.
Today’s work has that special treat of combining “Where” and “When” in its themes, and think you may find it interesting to try a live run, and or peruse the code as per …
- HTML/Javascript source code daylight_saving_time.html … supervising … but needing …
- PHP source code daylight_saving_time.php … because the recent “Client Pre-emptive Iframe” thoughts don’t work so well for the cross-domain requirements that GoMashup’s RSS feed and Wikipedia data source presents to us
Thinking back on it, it stands to reason some aspects of “Where” are intertwined with “When” by where we live … doh!
Anyway, hope you enjoy thinking about time and space … and all that. It is a topic of huge interest to those people out there trying to Internationalize their websites.
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