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Electronic Pass-Along Cards

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 8:40 am
by Ray DeGraw-p40
Our stake is making pass-along cards that show each building and directions to the building, along with the address for mormon.org and a space to put a small sticker to announce an event in the stake. As part of this project, we want to make these cards available electronically - for members to be able to be send them via e-mail and link to them on their personal blogs.

What would be the best way to do this - and I am not a technology expert by any stretch.

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:37 am
by RossEvans
A printed map gets complicated, in part because of copyright.

But as for the electronic link to embed in an email, etc., a quick-and dirty method would be to use Google Maps interactively:
  1. Go to maps.google.com
  2. Search on the address of your building.
  3. When the map displays, click on "Link" in the upper-right corner.
  4. Copy the link labeled "Paste link in email or IM"
  5. Paste that link into your email, etc.
For example, here is a link to my meetinghouse address. It took a few seconds to create. The pasted link looks like this:

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http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=1000+Rutherford+Ln,+Austin+TX&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=40.732051,68.027344&ie=UTF8&z=16&iwloc=addr

But that complicated link was created for me by following the directions above.

Similar functionality is available on Yahoo's maps.yahoo.com or MS maps.live.com

Perhaps someday the Church will create such links directly from its new meetinghouse-locator web site, maps.lds.org

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 12:01 pm
by russellhltn
It's simpler then that.

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http://maps.lds.org/?unitId=101826
Or you can point to the webpage. The first page is open to the public.

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https://secure.lds.org/units/home/0,9781,600-1-7-101826,00.html
Interesting, the new maps.lds.org doesn't work from stake web pages.

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 12:56 pm
by RossEvans
RussellHltn wrote:It's simpler then that.

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http://maps.lds.org/?unitId=101826

I guess the "someday" I wished for above is already here :)

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 1:45 pm
by russellhltn
I didn't know it either. I just tried to find a way to get the same map you get from the LUWS page. I didn't realize that maps.lds.org was "live". Or that the resulting URL was so simple.

But in the process I uncovered a bug in the stake functionality. It don't work.

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 2:22 pm
by RossEvans
RussellHltn wrote:I didn't know it either. I just tried to find a way to get the same map you get from the LUWS page. I didn't realize that maps.lds.org was "live". Or that the resulting URL was so simple.

But in the process I uncovered a bug in the stake functionality. It don't work.

I'm not sure it would be considered a bug, or just out of scope of the current release. Stake centers typically are "meetinghouses" for several wards. (In fact, the example you posted was for a single ward that happens to meet at a stake center.) But since the "Meetinghouse Locator" -- now titled "Find Places of Worship" -- is designed primarily to find normal Sunday worship services and ward assignments, it does not surprise me that stake unit numbers don't apply in that interface.

In any case, I gather that you discovered this URL syntax yourself, and it is not documented. Right? Or have I just failed to find the instructions?

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 2:56 pm
by russellhltn
boomerbubba wrote:I'm not sure it would be considered a bug, or just out of scope of the current release.
Uh, I guess I'm not communicating. Go to the LUWS page for your stake. Click on Map. It doesn't work. If it's "out of scope" then the link shouldn't be there. ;)

Yes, I found this out on my own by going to the LUWS page and clicking "map". My idea was simply to use the "church" map rather then google or yahoo since there was some copyright concerns. The simplicity of the results surprised me.

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 3:21 pm
by RossEvans
RussellHltn wrote:Yes, I found this out on my own by going to the LUWS page and clicking "map". My idea was simply to use the "church" map rather then google or yahoo since there was some copyright concerns. The simplicity of the results surprised me.

Nice find.

Even using the Church interface, I'm still wondering about copyright issues that might arise from printing lots of pass-along cards from these maps, which originate with Google or Microsoft and their licensor map providers Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ . At a minimum the printed rendering, if allowed, should preserve all the copyright notices in the map images.

I see no problem at all embedding the URL in a mail message, blog post, etc.

IANAL

Thank You!!

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:15 pm
by Ray DeGraw-p40
Thanks. I am playing around with what you've provided. I think we probably will stick to embedding the links into e-mails and blogs, so there won't be any printing issues. I really like the live, active maps for the links - rather than a static map we would create and people would have to copy as an image. However, we probably will create our own simple directions for any print versions of the cards in order to avoid any copyright issues - and save them to a web page people can print if they want to give someone a hard copy.

Again, thanks!

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:57 pm
by RossEvans
Just as a footnote, for street-map images without all the legal complications, you might check out OpenStreetMap.org.