What happens to geocoding near the poles
Near the poles, longitude lines converge to a single point and time zones become almost meaningless. Location software built around ordinary assumptions tends to behave strangely there.
My Geocode blog (page 13)
Notes on geocoding, IP data, and building on the My Geocode API.
Older posts
A cleaner error format across every endpoint
Every endpoint now returns errors in a single, consistent format, making failures easier to detect, log and handle programmatically.
Build a time zone picker that defaults to the visitor's zone
Pre-select a visitor's own time zone in a settings form using their IP address, instead of asking them to search for it themselves.
The case for keeping a public status page honest
A status page that always shows green, even during an outage, is not reassuring at all. It is evidence the page is decorative rather than operational.
Self-hosting Open-Elevation vs using a managed endpoint
Open-Elevation can run on your own infrastructure or against a managed endpoint. Here is what each path actually costs in effort and money.
Restrict form submissions to a delivery radius
Geocode a submitted delivery address and reject it automatically when it falls outside a fixed distance from your hub, before an order is ever placed.
Building a hiking trail difficulty rating from elevation data
A trail guide app was rating hikes as easy, moderate, or difficult based on distance alone, which put a flat six-mile walk in the same bucket as a six-mile climb.
The International Date Line and the requests that cross it
Two points a short distance apart can be on different calendar days entirely, purely because of where the International Date Line happens to run between them.
New ways to pay: PayPal, cryptocurrency and bank transfer
Accounts can now fund prepaid credit or pay for an Unlimited package using PayPal, cryptocurrency, or a bank transfer, whichever option fits best.
Why webhook-only APIs quietly exclude batch users
A webhook works well for one request at a time. It works badly for a script that just wants to send a thousand lookups and wait for a thousand answers.
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