Goodbye 620 Errors

Well, thanks to those of you who were nice enough to send me emails about all the 620 errors we were getting recently, you’ve pressured me into fixing them (at least for regular geocoding). So, today I integrated a new data source, and I’m hoping we’ve solved the majority of the 620 errors that you developers have been getting.

We are still looking into fixing the reverse geocoding 620 errors, so be patient with us there. (see update below)

Please let me know if you keep receiving errors or other issues. I’ll keep looking into making the service more stable and reliable. Your feedback counts.

Cheers.

Update: I just found another data source for both regular geocoding and reverse geocoding, so hopefully that will clear up the 620 error codes for good.  Again, let me know if you run into any more.

Question for App Makers Using Tiny GeoCoder

Thanks to you, our fabulous community of users and developers, we’re coming up on our 20 millionth API query (since we started counting). It’s an amazing thing to watch something like this take off as it has. I’m honestly taken aback every time I think about how many apps and people are using this extremely simple geocoder. So first, thank you.

Now, because you’ve been so amazing as a community, I’d love to get your feedback. I’ve been racking my brain on what I could potentially do to help you more. Tonight I came upon an idea and I wanted to see what you all thought.

The Question for Geo Coder Application Developers

The open ended question is… What else can we build for you?

The more direct question/idea I had was whether or not statistics would be helpful for you? Similar to Bit.ly or Su.pr and their url shortening, I thought perhaps you would like to know things related to your apps geo-coding like:

• Regions, countries, states, etc, are being geocoded the most?
• How often your API key (if we made one for you for trackability) is being used? (how many queries has your app hit us with?)
• What IP addresses are using your API key?
• What regions, countries, states, etc, are using your API key?

That’s just some of the ideas I came up with off the top of my head and some of them might not be useful at all since I would assume you might be tracking this data yourself. But if you liked these and/or had any other ideas that you’d like to see, I’d love to hear what they are.

So? What else can I do for you?  What would be the most valuable stat or service I could produce using this information for you?

IP Address to Location: Geolocation

Of course, address geo-location is just one way to geo-locate someone. Other ways of geolocation can be done using IP addresses, and although it’s never perfect it can be helpful in certain circumstances (like customizing your website for localized searches and visitors).

If you’re looking to find a location from an IP address, I’ll tell you right now that IP2Location is the best in the business.

I’ve implemented these guys APIs in the past to help customize and localize my users experience on websites and applications. Just start thinking out of the box about what you could do with something like that.

Cheers. Happy geo-coding.

New JSONP (JavaScript Callback) Support

I really love great suggestions. A few days ago David Evans from CanTab sent me an email suggesting an additional feature be added to Tiny Geo-Coder. He was kind enough to send along an example of what the new API call might look like and what the response might look like. It was so simple, I couldn’t resist.

This evening, I implemented JSONP support into the Tiny Geo-Coder API (JSONP in Wikipedia). So, now, as the documentation explains, if you send a querystring variable titled “callback” with the value being whatever function name you’re wanting to use, you’ll receive it back, wrapping the geo coordinates (or location, if you’re doing reverse geo-coding) in your function.

David explains the use case for this best:

The beauty of this is that it allows you to use the API in AJAX apps without running into problems with the same-origin policy.

So, there you have it. Go run off and create some awesome AJAX apps and report back to me what you’re doing so I can give you some props here on the blog.

Cheers,

Nate Ritter

13 Million API Queries Later …

As you may know, I created this nice little service back in March of 2008 but didn’t release it publicly until around November 2008 because I didn’t think it was that valuable. Boy was I wrong. Apparently it’s been valuable over 13 million times to many of you who are reading this today since early December ’08.

That’s freaking amazing. I honestly still laugh at the simplicity of the app and think it’s hilarious that people are even using it. But, at the same time, I fully understand how much it’s needed now.

In case you didn’t get that, it’s been about 6 months and we’ve had 13 million queries on our API (if you can even call it that). That translates to about 3,000 queries per hour or 50 queries per minute. I’m actually amazed we haven’t gone down more often or run into the infamous “620″ error more. I mean, I know it’s simple, but still. I’ve never personally created anything (by myself) that’s gotten this much use before.

Regardless of how that gets me all up in an excited tizzy, the real thanks goes out to you! Thank you for using the service. Thank all of you who have given feedback and suggestions. Thank you for linking to this site, writing stories about it, blogging about it, and spreading the word. Thank you for thinking it’s useful and using it. You deserve 13 million thank you notes.. but don’t worry, I won’t spam you with that.

Please, as always, let me know what I can do to help you with your app. Also, please don’t be shy in letting me know what you’re doing with it. I would love to start highlighting people’s projects and companies who are using the service. I’d love to share the “thank you” with some link love and press for ya.

Thanks again! Keep on geocoding!

Nate Ritter, Web Chef