As many a real-estate professional has stated before: location, location, location!
With our latest release of WebWiz@rd, we're introducing a new module that I was personally in charge of developing: Location Management. It's a simple, yet powerful tool that our customers can use to aid their own website visitors with finding locations related to our customers' businesses.
In order to build such a user interface for pinpointing, searching and finding locations on a map, we turned to the Google Maps API as our go-to mapping platform for this new module. Google's Maps API is now in its third version and has a solid base of reliable instrumentation that we can leverage while building our own software.
That's not to say that we didn't add a little REM magic to the mix, of course! With Jamie McBurney's advice, I implemented a system that prevents end users from being blocked by Google for too many hits on their API by utilizing our own, custom "distance between two points on a map" algorithm. With the distance algorithm running on our native WebWiz@rd platform, we ensure that location searches are blisteringly fast and efficient, while still taking advantage of the raw power of the Google Maps interface that millions of people around the world are familiar with.
We're quite happy with the new Locations Management module, and we're certain that our customers will enjoy using it as well.
I'll update this blog with links to some customer websites that are using the module in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
