Outside US

[haryadoon]

I love the concept behind beermapping, and I agree with the principles.  Unfortunately, it only covers the US and I don't live anywhere near there !  What about beermapping outside the US ?  I live in New Zealand, and we have a wonderful craft beer industry here.  I orginally come from Vancouver, a part of North America that also has a tradition for high-quality beer crafting.

What can I do to help expand beermapping beyond the US ?

[beerinator]

These sorts of things could be worked on.  A while back I was working on getting Canada locations available, but most of the geocoding (getting an address converted to lat/long) at the time was not returning very good information.  I would put in addresses and often I would simply get back the center of the town that the brewery was located in, rather than the proper street address.

If you really want me to proceed with a New Zealand map, I would need someone to help me verify that proper addresses were returning.  There is a geocoding service where you can try a few addresses to see how accurate it is.  Feel free to test it out with a couple or three addresses to see if it is working well or not.
http://www.travelgis.com/geocode/

If this geocoding service doesn't work, we could start by doing things the hard way and putting each location into a maps.google.com search and stripping the lat/long from the url.  I can demonstrate how this can be done if you would like.

Seriously, if you can find me 30 or 40 lats/longs for beer locations in New Zealand, I would be more than happy to start a map for that area.  The same goes for any city in the world (this offer does not necessarily apply for any country at the moment, but a nice sized one like NZ would be fine).

[haryadoon]

OK !  Here's some breweries to get started with ... I'll produce a lot more over the next few weeks :

Limburg Beer Company
NAC - ZQ410 8CTWD
500 Williams St
Hastings
New Zealand
www.limburg.co.nz
Phone : +64-6-878-5542

Martinborough Beer & Ales
NAC - ZLMFL 83X5X
New York St Extension
Martinborough
New Zealand
Phone : +64-6-306-8310

Tuatara Brewing
NAC - ZKQ21 85DVR
183 Akatarawa Rd
Waikanae
Wellington
New Zealand
Phone :  +64-4-293-3351
 
Let me know if you need more details than what I've provided with these.

[beerinator]

Are those addresses showing up in the right places when entered into http://maps.google.com ?

The main reason why I haven't started on other countries is because the addresses aren't returning accurate latitude and longitude.

[HopSing]

 ??? Judging by your tone, the bodacious brewpubs of Botswana project is on hold for now?

[haryadoon]

In Google Maps :  when I enter the addresses, it usually points to the exactly correct place.  The exceptions are where the place has no specific address.  Martinborough Beers and Ales is a good example -- their official address is "New York St Extension", which means the dead-end end of NY St.  There's no street number.  Google Maps can't find it, but if you search for "New York St, Martinborough, New Zealand", it returns a pointer to the middle of NY St, which is pretty close.

The TravelGIS site is hopeless with NZ addresses, but I can easily get the NAC by navigating around the map.  Do you need me to report the NAC, Longitude and Latitude ?

How do you get the longitude and latitude from Google Maps ?  Do you use their API for that ?

[beerinator]

Honestly, I don't know what NAC is (I haven't googled it yet).

You can manually get the longitude and latitude from google, by zooming as close as possible to the location and clicking "link to this page".  The address that it puts into the address bar will now contain something like this;
&ll=41.931441,-87.709866
This is the lat,long for an address.  As you can imagine, doing this for every location is not fun.  So that is why I haven't set these things up yet.  But occasionally when I can't make an address work, I will do it this way and it is a pretty good solution.

If google is returning the proper locations for most addresses then I can probably set up a way to enter locations in NZ without any of us looking up coordinates manually (cross your fingers).  This is done through coding and the google api (but it's free for anyone).

I get a lot of emails about locations currently on the map that are 2 or 3 blocks off of where they should be.  I couldn't imagine how many emails I would get if locations were closer to miles off.  This is what worries me about these things.  And this is why I would be much happier making a map like this if there were someone like you who could "oversee" the process.

[haryadoon]

I forgot to mention that I am very happy to oversee the process.

NAC is the "Universal Address" that the geocoding site gives you (it stands for Natural Address Coding).  I found a great geocoding conversion site at http://www.nearby.org.uk

You'd rather have the longitude and latitude, so here's an updated list :
Limburg Beer Company
NAC - ZQ410 8CTWD
Lat: -39.6272444444444
Long: 176.853777777778
500 Williams St
Hastings
New Zealand
www.limburg.co.nz
Phone : +64-6-878-5542

Martinborough Beer & Ales
NAC - ZLMFL 83X5X
Lat: -41.2120148148148
Long: 175.459377777778
New York St Extension
Martinborough
New Zealand
Phone : +64-6-306-8310

Tuatara Brewing
NAC - ZKQ21 85DVR
Lat: -40.9140518518519
Long: 175.094237037037
183 Akatarawa Rd
Waikanae
Wellington
New Zealand
Phone :  +64-4-293-3351

[beerinator]

haryadoon!

Check this out;
http://beermapping.com/maps/maps.php?m=newzealand

There are some issues:

• 1. The weather link on the second tab of each marker is broken due to the fact that it is using US zip codes to function.  We can fix this (not today!)
• 2. The map is only working for breweries and brewpubs at the moment.  This also is easily correctable.
• 3. There is no submission function for New Zealand locations at the moment.  Technically it's easier for you just to paste addresses into this thread than posting each line (street address, location name...) into a form that would submit.  But it's more tedious for me this way (no biggie).  I will look into making this work, but I need to internationalize my location submission form to include provinces and things like other countries crazy moon postal codes.

I'm sure there are lots of other problems with the New Zealand map that I haven't thought of.  But we'll find them sometime.  ;D

[NicerInPerson]

That's pretty darn cool

[beerinator]

Zoom in sort of close and you can see how much different New Zealand's map data looks compared to the US map data.  I really like NZ's a lot better than how ours looks. 

Look at this and then zoom in one more slot (you can only zoom one time more than this anyway)
http://beermapping.com/maps/maps.php?m=newzealand#lat=-36.848444506627104&lng=174.7643494606018&z=1
It seems like they have the land plots all marked or something.

In the bottom right you can read who is supplying that particular map data to google. (Sciences Pty Ltd in the case of NZ)

[haryadoon]

You've done a fantastic job !   Where did you get the data for all these pubs and breweries from ?

Re. the properties on the map :   I think the Auckland and Wellington regional councils got together to publish this level of detail to Google.

I think I'll submit (via this thread) some of the other beer landmarks around.

[haryadoon]

Island Bay Brewing Company is also known as Bennetts Brewery.  Their web site is http://www.bennettsbeer.co.nz

You have Tuatara Brewing in the list twice.  Two slightly different locations, about 50 ft away from each other.  Either one is accurate :-)

I'm working on the details for another great local brewery :  Pink Elephant Brewery in Blenheim at the top of the South Island.  Unfortunately, they don't post their actual location on their web site.  Stay tuned.

[haryadoon]

Another one to add :

Tasman Brewing (formerly Harrington's Brewery, Nelson)
53 Beach Rd
Richmond, Nelson
New Zealand
Lat -41.333804
Long 173.18602
Google:  http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=53+Beach+Rd,+Richmond,+Nelson+7002,+New+Zealand&ie=UTF8&sll=42.93,-75.853056&sspn=0.120409,0.228653&om=1&z=17&ll=-41.333804,173.18602&spn=0.003859,0.010664&iwloc=addr
Phone +64 3 544 8675

[beerinator]

I already have a Harrington's Brewery on the map;
http://beermapping.com/maplinks/?HDCHZ

Is this the former of the Brewery that you just posted?

There is also a Tasman Brewery on the map with the same address, but it is a few miles down "Beach Street".

Here it is;
Tasman Brewery;
http://beermapping.com/maplinks/?GJZLO

Here is the Tasman Brewing (formerly Harrington's Brewery) that you just submitted;
http://beermapping.com/maplinks/?SKQED
It seems like it's perfectly where your link goes.

Thanks for telling me about the duplicate.  I seem to do that a bunch.