Well, I need to know why I can't get an API Key for PlaceMaker...Everytime I try, it ask me for my password over and over again.
It never does anything besides bring me pack to the page to enter my password... I would really like to start using this API ASAP.
I've tried on different browsers and different days.

hi gays, can i edit smartwindows, i mean can i modify his background color ,format and more?. I know how edit his border color but i need to edit his background and format .
thanks gays
fede, rosario , argentina.

Looks Great would love to be able to something similar but with fishing.

Hi I am looking for some help with Placemaker as I am brand new to RSS and MAPS and Geo Information

I am trying to put a RSS feed to Placemaker for the result output to a Map?
Below is what I am doing is this wrong?


http://wherein.yahooapis.com/v1/document

documentUR=http://www.google.com/alerts/feeds/03413850423032271991/876457352076090172
documentType=text/rss
outputType=rss
appid=TzsGgsnV34EFNF.0oLfSxs1fj6GaSVj6jSELjVZNol6azMx6_4e35_kMWybzF79gtDsUG3OqI4
n4XNKJtw--

Any help would be much appreciated as the output from Placemaker RSS would then go in a pipe that shows fishing information onto a map.

and I just can not understand the documentation but that might be just me.

Thank you
Billy

Your request must be presented as a HTTP POST request. This means you need to use JavaScript or another language (such as PHP) that allows you to send such requests. In JavaScript, the following code should work:

CODE

var documentURL = 'http://www.google.com/alerts/feeds/03413850423032271991/876457352076090172';
var documentType = 'text/rss';
var outputType = 'rss';
var appid = 'TzsGgsnV34EFNF.0oLfSxs1fj6GaSVj6jSELjVZNol6azMx6_4e35_kMWybzF79gtDsUG3OqI4
n4XNKJtw--';
var passData = 'documentURL='+escape(documentURL)+'&documentType='+escape(documentType)+'&outputType='+escape(outputType)+'&appid='+escape(appid);
var AJAX = null;
if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
   AJAX = new XMLHttpRequest();
} else {
   AJAX = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
if (AJAX == null) {
   alert("Your browser doesn't support AJAX.");                                         
   return false
} else {
   AJAX.open("POST", "http://wherein.yahooapis.com/v1/document", true);
   AJAX.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
   AJAX.onreadystatechange = function() {                      
      if (AJAX.readyState == 4 || AJAX.readyState == "complete") { 
         callback(AJAX.responseText, AJAX.status); 
      }                               
   }                                  
   AJAX.send(passData);
}

This will insert your paramters into the body of a POST request, send it to Placemaker, and call your function called 'callback' with the response text and status

Eddie Babcock
Yahoo! Geo Technologies

I am trying to use javascript and open the url.
But I dont see anything happening. It doesnt print any alert messages after this line
AJAX.open("POST,"http://wherein.apis.com/v1/document",true);
....

I dont understand whats wrong here. My guess is it doesnt open the link , as I dont see any alert messages popped up after this line.
Please help

Thanks,
Sangy

Walter,

Any idea when this will be solved in the production version?

Here is an example of Heverle in Flickr (where it should be Heverlee): http://www.flickr.com/photos/schoeters/3801108578/
Another one that shows Louvain-La-Neuve (where it should be Leuven): http://www.flickr.com/photos/schoeters/2482774729/

hello, i get 500 errors on many common news sites, am i doing anything wrong?
note: i can successfully use placemaker on most urls, just for some reason none of the most popular news websites.

links i get 500s for:


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...oryId=106640661
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/world/as...0detain.html?hp
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/07/19/...ions/index.html

thanks

When we get the data back there is lots of it (json < rss < xml) would love to just get the county name, lat, lng for the text I am sending over. In most cases we send over short title, if that returns nothing we send over the larger document content. Would love to just get the countries that are locations in the document. I know we could write our own system, but I hope to use this one. Thanks.

First of all, thanks for making this great API available.
Below are some issue that I've encountered, that IMO should be considered as bugs in place identification. For your consideration...

1. Text: .. hunting is ..
Returns: Hunting Island, SC

2. Text: .. the lemons
Returns: Lemons, MD

And for my personal favorite:
3. Text: bermuda shorts
Returns: Bermuda

4. Text: Hoboken
"Hoboken, Antwerp, Belgium" is given a higher confidence than "Hoboken, NJ"


BTW, I'm not sure if this is the best place to post such bug reports, but I couldn't find any other. Maybe you should create a forum just for bugs?

Some more bogus results for extremely simple input:

New York, NY

<contentlocation xml:lang="en" xmlns:yahoo="http://www.yahooapis.com/v1/base.rng" xmlns:xml="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" xmlns="http://wherein.yahooapis.com/v1/schema">
<processingTime>0.000676</processingTime>
<version>build 090508</version>
<documentLength>18</documentLength>
<document/>
</contentlocation>

carmichael ca

same as for New York. My home town does not exist in yahoo-land. Neither does Kuala Lumpur. But Athens Greece is OK. Very poor consistency.

Vienna Va

gave me Vienna Austria


Some input of place names from Jules Verne:

As soon as the robbery was discovered,
picked detectives hastened off to Liverpool, Glasgow, Havre, Suez,
Brindisi, New York, and other ports, inspired by the proffered reward
of two thousand pounds, and five per cent.

Got nothing but static:

<contentlocation xml:lang="en" xmlns:yahoo="http://www.yahooapis.com/v1/base.rng" xmlns:xml="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" xmlns="http://wherein.yahooapis.com/v1/schema">
<processingTime>0.000731</processingTime>
<version>build 090508</version>
<documentLength>310</documentLength>
<document/>
</contentlocation>

But if I type Brindisi into yahoo maps it takes me straight to Italy, as expected. You'd think this service would work better.

Two more interesting results. To save space here, I've linked the original source text and the full XML response below instead of pasting them in. Hope that's OK.

Firstly, a false positive. This source text produces this response. The source text refers to a person named Nic, which Placemaker seems to have interpreted as meaning Nicaragua. The strangest thing here, I think, is the confidence score of 9.

Secondly, a surprising omission. This source text mentions "Vegas", together with a number of places in California -- but it doesn't specifically mention "Las Vegas". Placemaker's response, however, omits Las Vegas altogether -- I'd have expected it to appear, if only with a low confidence score.

I must say, though, that's two small fluffs, with more than a thousand texts assessed flawlessly so far for our application. Placemaker is only a little short of magic.

First of all, thanks for making this great API available.
Below are some issue that I've encountered, that IMO should be considered as bugs in place identification. For your consideration...

1. Text: .. hunting is ..
Returns: Hunting Island, SC

2. Text: .. the lemons
Returns: Lemons, MD

And for my personal favorite:
3. Text: bermuda shorts
Returns: Bermuda

4. Text: Hoboken
"Hoboken, Antwerp, Belgium" is given a higher confidence than "Hoboken, NJ"


BTW, I'm not sure if this is the best place to post such bug reports, but I couldn't find any other. Maybe you should create a forum just for bugs?

this returns Palo Alto, CA (because of "Ladera") instead of Los Angeles, CA
It's surprising because the text mentions Radlock LA, CA 90056.
I was hoping PlaceMaker would use the zipcode to know.

"arty info.. BBQ, Dranks, Jaccuzzi, 2 Dancefloors, Smoke Area we POPPIN'! 1030-5am @6666 Radlock LA,CA 90056 Come TIU!Ladera near Friday's!"

Laurent.

There are several German words which cause wrong location detections in PlaceMaker. For example:
2347581 - Michigan, US
23511609 - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, US

This problem does even exist if you set the language for the API to "German".

Hi all,

Placemaker is great! But I wonder what's the quickest way to plot the data a get in response to a map? Some tool to convert to KML would be nice. Or is there something I can do with Pipes?

Cheers,
Rainer

I just released http://icant.co.uk/geomaker which does microformats and a map copy and paste. KML can be another option. I'll have a go at it.

Hi Chris! Awesome! I realized that your text field takes more than the 50kByte Limit :-) Do you chop the text up into 50k pieces before you post to Placemaker or are you using some other Geoparser? (If so, I'd be interested for my own project as well...)

Also, I wrote a small Java app by now that turns the Placemaker XML output to KML. Don't have a way of picking out false positives, though. That's really neat in your app!

Keep it up!

Cheers,
Rainer

______________________________
http://blogloc.no5.at/

Can't get result Placemaker because No example is made me to confusion.



ttp://developer.yahoo.com/geo/geoplanet/ has example

but

http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/placemaker/ has NO example

I want using Placemaker in Flex help me

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------->


please help me
When I written this line to browser

http://wherein.yahooapis.com/v1/document?d...ntent=Arlington



<error xml:lang="en">
<description>405 Method Not Allowed</description>
<detail>Method not allowed for this URI
</detail>
</error>

I just show this message 7 hour
No google-god
No yahoo-god

give me holy~

I solved it

but other problem is

when use flex to get result


result is


<rss version="2.0" xml:lang="en" xmlns="http://wherein.yahooapis.com/v1/schema_rss" xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" xmlns:cl="http://wherein.yahooapis.com/v1/cle" xmlns:xml="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace">
<channel>
<title>Yahoo! Content Location Engine</title>
<link><![CDATA[http://wherein.yahooapis.com]]></link>
<description>Yahoo! Content Location Engine That Extracts Places from documents</description>
<ttl>5</ttl>
<pubDate>Sun, 28 Jun 2009 02:24:42 PDT</pubDate>
<copyright>Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.</copyright>
<item>


not contain <?xml 1.0 ......>

any guy help me.


flex code

<mx:HTTPService id="YahooPlaceMaker"
url="http://wherein.yahooapis.com/v1/document"
result="ResultGetPlaceMaker(event)"
fault="FaultGetPlaceMaker(event)"
method="POST"
resultFormat="e4x"
useProxy="false"
request="xml"
contentType="application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
showBusyCursor="true"
/>


and call httpservice code is


private function UsingPlaceMaker():void
{
var params:Object = new Object();
//params.inputLanguage ="eu-kr"

params.documentTitle ="I want Korea";
params.documentContent ="Korea";//txt1.text;

//params.autoDisambiguate = false;
params.outputType = 'rss';
params.documentType = 'text/plain';
params.appid ='uQfoNBXV34G9uifKaSWrQcise2hh3pVlK1g8Nr2p.nCIu3NPGmC5h43sIuszUFc-';

YahooPlaceMaker.send(params);

}


why I can't

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <-- this line

Hi,

I wanted Placemaker to extract location from a webpage. I'm using:

documentType=text/html
documentURL=http://www.wspomagam.pl/fundacja/66253

but I'm not getting any information on the place defined in hCard or adr microformat.
The data returned is for a place named on that page, but not inside adr.

Is there another way of calling the API for the adr data to be used?

BTW: I used microformat validators on that page and they report no errors or problems.

Thanks.

On the flip side of the JSON output thread, it would be cool if Placemaker could extract references from JSON content. It already supports "text/xml" and "application/xml", so "application/json" could be processed with similar semantics.

Similar to many JSON APIs, it would probably make sense for a parameter specifying a JSON callback function to be provided when this documentType is used.

Since there is no standard equivalent of XPath for JSON that I know of, I'm not sure what you'd provide as a path descriptor for each reference, but it would ideally be directly usable as Javascript expression to extract the data item containing the reference.

So you'd like Placemaker to look in all strings anywhere in the JSON for place references? Or were you thinking of some specific geo-markup in JSON format?

This seems like the perfect utility to achieve something I've been thinking about in a web app I'm working on.

I have a web app where people enter the address and time zone of the house they live in. I was thinking it would be nice to automatically detect their time zone based on their address, but since time zones are separated on county lines, I realized this was going to be a difficult undertaking. It seems like I could achieve this with Yahoo! Placemaker, but I may be misunderstanding.

Is this possible? Given a street address, can I use Yahoo! Placemaker to find its timezone? If so, how?

[...]

Is this possible? Given a street address, can I use Yahoo! Placemaker to find its timezone? If so, how?

When I ask Placemaker to geotag a URL the XML results add additional information onto the original target text. For example:

Newark Liberty International Airport ===> Newark Liberty International Airport, Newark,NJ
Tucson, AZ ===> Tucson, AZ, US

While the added identifiers are correct, they do not help when searching the original text for the target placenames which Placemaker found.

Is there anyway to have the text I began with returned "AS IS" without the added identifier?

I have a news article from Arlington, TX, and I can't get Placemaker to stop returning Arlington, VA. I set the focusWoeId to:

55949112 "US" "MSA Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington" ENG Zone 2347602

But that didn't appear to alter the results.

Am I missing something?

I have a news article from Arlington, TX, and I can't get Placemaker to stop returning Arlington, VA. I set the focusWoeId to:

55949112 "US" "MSA Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington" ENG Zone 2347602

But that didn't appear to alter the results.

Am I missing something?

The Placemaker User Guide has the wrong capitalization for the focusWoeId parameter. The focusWoeId parameter should be set to "2347602" for your example. Here is an example for using this parameter:

CODE

http://wherein.yahooapis.com/v1/document

documentType=text/plain&appid=replace_this_with_your_appid&focusWoeId=2347602&documentContent=Arlington

Returns an entry for "Arlington, TX, US"

You must post the content to the URL.

Eddie Babcock
Yahoo! Geo Technologies

I tried this,

CODE

http://wherein.yahooapis.com/v1/document/1?documentType=text/plain&appid=replace_this_with_your_appid&focusWoeId=2347602&documentContent=Arlington

but it gives this error :

CODE

<yahoo:error xml:lang="">
<yahoo:description>GET method not supported</yahoo:description>
<yahoo:detail>
<code>-9991</code>
<cause>input</cause>
</yahoo:detail>
</yahoo:error>

Ok, here we go, I had some time to play with Placemaker:

* Quick tutorial on using PHP and cURL with placemaker
* News Map - taking the Yahoo RSS news feed and Placemaker to find locations

I'll write up the making of the news maps later and probably add it on github.

cheers
Chris

Thanks Chris - demo with RSS and map is just excellent example of how people can use Placemaker!

I posted the code with comments and an approach example on my blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com/2009/05/22/news...to-a-news-feed/

I'm just curious - what is the underlying extraction technology being used to extract places from unstructured text? Is it something developed by Yahoo! or a third-party technology?

Hi Natasha - this is a technology which was developed within Yahoo! Geoinformatics group.

To add to Roman's response, we use our underlying, internally developed, geo-technology to provide the "heavy lifting" of geo-parsing, geo-identification and geo-enrichment for Placemaker, GeoPlanet, Fire Eagle, Flickr and many other Yahoo! products and services.

-Gary

Hi
I'd really like to be able to use Placemaker in a Yahoo! Pipes environment. Any chance of offering a JSON api on the input side, cf. the Reuters/OpenCalais service, that will work with the Pipes webservice block?

thanks
tony

Placemaker is now available as a table within our YQL webservice (see [link]http://developer.yahoo.com/yql[/link], which allows results to be returned in JSON. Here is an example request:

CODE

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=SELECT%20*%20FROM%20geo.placemaker%20WHERE%20documentContent%20%3D%20%22They%20followed%20him%20to%20deepest%20Africa%20and%20found%20him%20there%2C%20in%20Timbuktu%22%20AND%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20documentType%3D%22text%2Fplain%22%20AND%20appid%20%3D%20%22yourappid%22&format=json

Use your own application id

Eddie Babcock
Yahoo! Geo Technologies

http://lerdorf.com/pl.php

This simple little demo lets you paste a blob of text or a URL and it will show you the XML reply from the Placemaker API.

-Rasmus