GeoHash's have the extremely attractive property that shorter versions of the same URL correspond to larger areas around the same point - ie, you can trade precision for size.
Geohash also doesn't require a database to lookup hashes - all you need is the formula. The only disadvantage seems to be the slightly longer URLs.
Very nice. We did something very similar some years ago, http://notamap.com, with the idea of making it very easy to save maps with notes and embed them on your web. No sign-up, no database storing your data: everything is encoded in the URL you keep. A pity we never really polished it, nor tried to promote it. It has a small but faithful user base.
I like it. (my unsolicited advice) depending on how you are storing the data, you should let the user pass a query string or something to the url that returns the raw lat long in json format as opposed to the actual map, that way you have this mini api for more advanced users.
That's already there ;)
You can get any location in JSON, given the generated key:
eg. http://geo.gy/LmZW/json
whoops, should've read the about us. I like it.
This looks cool and could be handy. I wonder how many phones could easily use this link for navigation though. Currently I use glympse if I want to tell people where I am so they can meet up with me or pick me up.
If you want to do something similar with an iPhone, you should check Milestones, http://alandair.com/milestones. Keep and share geolocated notes, possibly with photo, via Twitter/Twitpic and email (KMZ for Google Earth). Backup as a Google Fusion Table, with photos sent to Picasaweb. (Disclaimer: Milestones is my fault. Working now on recovering from the Fusion Table backup, and adding social awareness.)
Wow, milestones looks as if it is just the application I have been looking for for some time! If only I had an iPhone...
Thanks for the heads-up.
Being based on HTML5, geo.gy is platform-independent
"Sorry to see you go" Alert everytime I refresh the site or open it in a new tab, it's actually more or less like a welcome message, so you might want to check it
I didn't think it would be able to "find me" accurately, but it did. Now I'm kind of worried :) I thought Google Location Service would not have this precision.
The google map was kind of buggy for me with Firefox 3.6.2
I am in Beijing of China, and ... looks can't retrieve my location after I allowed the perdition of accessing my geo-location within my web browser.
It simple and clean, the name is good, I like it.
this is nice, how about letting the user drag the pin around in case the result isn't quite accurate enough (in my case it got my city, but what if i wanted to link to my house?)