Google has some great APIs for putting together mapping applications... but who wants to be bothered with having to read APIs? :) Now you can have a map mashup with hardly any work at all, with the new Map Rails Kit.
Created by Jacques Crocker, this Rails Kit makes it so easy to quickly build a Rails application with a mapping component. I took this new Kit, wrote a script to fetch some addresses (which I'll be blogging more about soon), and had a map with markers running within 10 minutes. You don't have to worry about geocoding, the javascript APIs, and so on... You just create a Marker record in the database with an address, and the Kit will geocode it for you and place the marker on the map. It's fun stuff.
So, if you want to add some sort of mapping to your Rails application, make sure you check out the Map Rails Kit -- it will save you a ton of time.
P.S. Another cool thing about this Kit is that I didn't create it. :) If, like Jacques, you have an idea for an application that would make a great Kit, feel free to drop me a line, and maybe you can be the next Rails Kits author!
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