map a list

Hello Map Fam. Yeah, we know, it has been a while since our last update. Our team has been hard at work over the last few months streamlining things on the back-end - if all went to plan, you were not the wiser.   At your leisure, track updates big and small  here .   We have also spent time creating video tutorials that walk through common workflows like creating your first map ,  starting from excel files ,  editing and  syncing  maps, and using  custom pin images .   From a capability perspective, we added delights to make your experience that much more streamlined. You can now create heat maps based on pin weight , as well as set icon size based on pin weight . Previously “the heat” on a heat map was based solely on pin count. A new video tutorial that walks you through it can be found here . COVID-19 Cases as of 5/12/2020 Rather than being presented with our landing page when you log in, we are now routing you to a customized dashboard...

In this tutorial, we discuss how to create heat maps based on weight vs pin count, as well as how to create pin maps with the icon size being driven off of a weight column.

We decided to experiment and create some video tutorials in the hope they might be more effective instruction and better at getting the word out about what features exist in mapalist and how to utilize them. We hope you find value in the first few we put out. Creating your First Map Using Custom Icons Starting from an Excel Sheet Editing your Maps, Post-Creation Syncing your Map and Google Sheet

Per mapbox , here is some insight on geocode range (that I always have to google to remember): Latitude and longitude  are a pair of numbers ( coordinates ) used to describe a position on the plane of a  geographic coordinate system . The numbers are in decimal degrees format and range from -90 to 90 for latitude and -180 to 180 for longitude. For example, Washington DC has a latitude  38.8951  and longitude  -77.0364 . 

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we decided to ask Google for some interesting facts about Turkeys.  We learned that turkeys can swim, that baby turkeys are called poults, and most importantly that in the fall turkeys eat bugs.  To that end, we primarily focused on fixing mapalist bugs in November.  Here are just a few of the many bugs that our engineering team squashed.  Maps with more than 25,000 pins were not rendering well - fixed!  The pin filter was ignoring the icon filter but not vice versa - fixed! Pin search was failing when the icon key was not visible - fixed! When an address failed the geocoding process, the process was stopping - fixed! Also, in the spirit of the season, we’ve added some new holiday themed pins. Get to mapping once the tryptophan wears off. Many thanks, Benjy P.S. You can see the full monty of features we added this month and since this year’s reboot by checking out the ever updated release notes .

Boo! October is now behind us and, in the spirit of Halloween, we have a number treats (in the form of new features) to share. Dropping a ton of pins on a map can be powerful.  At the same time, it can make a map cluttered and at times unwieldy. To that end, we’ve enabled the concept of pin filtering as well as pin toggling .  Give it a try on your active maps...we think you’ll like it.  But that’s not all when it comes to pins!  Many of you have asked about resizing pins - requesting the ability to make them bigger or smaller based on a specific use case. Pin size configuration is now live and in the wild allowing you to start small (as low as 50% of the standard pin size) or go big (up to 300% of the standard pin size). We get a fair number of questions about printing maps . To that end, we’ve added a print button to the manage maps page and map view page. We’ve also hidden some footer information upon print to make things look a bit cleaner....

Hello Mappers, September was another fantastic month in terms of feature development. The majority of our focus over the last 30 days or so was on improving the user experience associated with map creation . The process has been simplified and streamlined through a lot of work on the back-end. There are now fewer steps and error messaging/handling is a heck of a lot better a well. Please give the new map creation wizard a try...we’re pretty sure it will change your life! Oh, and while you’re at it, feel free to select 1 of the 9 new kitten icons available . So cute! In other news, we now provide granular visibility into your map views - when each view occurred and the associated IP address in addition to the location of the viewer (nicely visualized on a map of course). The password reset workflow has also been refactored to make life easier...for you and for us. What’s next you ask?  That’s entirely up to you. Well, maybe not entirely but we’re all about user ...

We rolled out a new password reset workflow yesterday. Why did we spend time on this?  Sending passwords via email on reset and requiring security Q+A, ... these were normal for 2007 when we started this, but UX and opsec best practices has evolved. Users had been having trouble w/ the existing workflow, which meant user pain and our time to service - more time on support means less time on developing. What was the approach? Find a best practice to copy from the wild: Slack .   Nitty Gritty We looked for the best experience and that was slack, so we copied 90% of what we saw.  Magic links are not yet rolled out but are a stones throw if we so desire in the future. One difference between us and slack is that some of our usernames are not emails, so we had to account for that.  No longer are secret question and answer requested on register, nor managed on account page.  In helping users w/ password issues, users can now head t...

Hello Mappers, We’re proud to share that one of your most requested features is now live - the ability to edit existing maps . From the manage page , simply click on the edit map button to be whisked away to a magical place that allows you to change all the settings for your map (and make your wildest dreams come true). That means no need to recreate your maps just to change the map type, advanced criteria, icons, or any other attributes for that matter. We’ve also enabled map cloning from the manage page as a nice to have feature. Piggybacking on last month’s release of custom map icons, we've added support for JPG and GIF formats (in addition to PNG and SVG).  We've also added to the stock set of icons available through the normal map creation process. Behind the scenes, map security and privacy has also been a focus. Last but not least, for those that want to add some flair to their maps, we’ve added custom map styles - pink, retro, night, aubergine*, silver, and...

(We neglected to post this in July) Hello Mappers, Hope your summer (or winter for those in the southern hemisphere) is off to a fantastic start.  Exciting times here at mapalist ! We’ve been busy jumping into our admittedly aging code base, rolling out new features, and thinking about what’s on the horizon. In the last 30 days we’ve made some awesome progress (if we don’t say so ourselves).  Most of the site is now mobile friendly, Unicode/UTF8 support has been added (finally!), and a ton of old code has been refactored to improve things like synchronization between maps and sheets. A Release Notes page is now available for your viewing pleasure. It offers insight into what’s new as well as a view into what’s next in the queue development. Got something in mind?  Please give us a shout and share your ideas. Of course, we’ve also added a new pricing plan that now supports self service changes along with configurable usage alerts. Thank you to our current subscribers...

Hello Mappers, Good things are happening at mapalist and we’re excited to share them with you. Just a few days ago, we released a fun new feature that enables the use of your custom icons on your maps. Ready to give it a whirl?  Make all your custom icon dreams come true. We hope this long time coming highly requested update is intuitive, but just in case, we added a step by step. Log in and click on your username (upper right) to visit the account page . Click on the custom map settings tab . If you have an image ready to go, click on the box to upload (we support PNG and SVG formats). If not, visit images.google.com and search for “PNG” or “SVG” followed by the type of image you’re looking for (e.g., “PNG baseball bat”, “SVG windmill”) - from there you can save and upload it. Rinse and repeat for as many images you desire. In other release related news, we’ve updated the account page with tabs making it easier to navigate. On that same page ( on the billing...

Hello Map Creators,  Since 2007, we have provided you the ability to quickly create, view, share, and update an unlimited number of maps at no cost. What was created around a simple use case for a friend’s wedding (see below) turned into a useful solution for a user base of now over 115,000. Huzzah!    Over the past 12 years, we’ve received donations from happy users that have covered a small portion of our costs. More than anything though, each donation made us smile and reinforced our desire to continue supporting the solution year over year. Thanks to all of you that have kept us motivated!  This model was sustainable until Google, out of nowhere, announced a new pricing policy for developers (like us) using their mapping services. In the spring of 2018, Google started charging heavily for maps usage - they essentially raised prices by 1400%.  For a year, we continued to self-fund the solution, but recently reached a point where the model...

Howdy. Just a quick post to announce we recently launched support for the new Google Sheets -- I think they were previously called Google Spreadsheets, but alas, the new name and UI are more aerodynamic... MapAList has recently been updated to support the new Google Sheets. To harness these new features, one must re-authorize MapAList's access to one's Google Docs.  (Note: This is only required for legacy users.) Take no action and only (the old) Google Spreadsheets will be supported. Follow the steps below, to keep up with the Joneses, and  be able to map from the new Google Sheets, as well as the old format. Steps: 1) Go to mapalist.com and log in 2) Go to MapAList's Google Auth Page 3) Click "Accept" on the Google page to enable MapAList to use your Google Sheets on your behalf 3.5) 10 push-ups, because if you don't have your health... 4) Try creating your map again 5) Let us know how you fared What you are doing is switching your account...

As the MapAList user base has grown over the past couple of years, one of the things we’ve noticed is that we have a ton of organizations leveraging our toolset to map their member/user bases. Religious organizations use MapAList to track their congregations; alumni associations use MapAList to track their members; campaigns and non-profits use MapAList to track their supporters/donors…you get the point. The reason I bring this up is because a few of these organizations have gotten smart and realized that they could push the work of updating their maps out to the user based directly using Google Forms. It’s like self check-out at the grocery store – the users love it because they are empowered (and because it’s a novelty to scan those barcodes) and so does the store because it reduces labor. Sounds cool – right? Well, implementing such a solution on your site with MapAList is not terribly difficult. Those folks at Google have made Google Forms easy to design and feed to a G...

Hello MapAList Faithful - it's been a while! Our most recent release includes a new map type called "Concentration/Heat Map." This new map type is great for large data sets with many addresses. It essentially creates a map in which the density of color (red) displayed is higher in areas with more addresses. The creation process is super simple...just choose "Concentration/Heat Map" in step 4 of the mapping process and you're good to go. Check it out: The rest should be very straightforward with a result that looks like the map you see below (note that I have about 4000 points in my Google Spreadsheet): Unfortunately, right now Concentration/Heat Maps don't allow you to see actual points on the map or click on them and get a pop up bubble, but if you have a big data set this might be just what you're looking for. If you have a large data set, give it a go and see what you think...

Roughly 18 months ago we launched MapAList with no publicity whatsoever. Brian, our founder, head developer, and resident visionary, shared his excitement around the solution with friends and family triggering our user base to slowly begin growing. Within a few months a handful of publications picked up on the simplicity and utility of MapAList and started to help us spread the word. LifeHacker .com was one of the first and gave us a huge boost. A week or so later The Chicago Tribune , The Orlando Sentinal , and The Baltimore Sun featured MapAList in their "How 2" column and things really started to heat up. From churches and wine distributors to real estate agents and news organizations , our users were finding creative and unique ways to make the most of MapAList . International press soon followed with articles in Russian , Indian, and French publications just to name a few. An influx of Brazilian users soon made us aware that we had been featured in Info Exame (...

If so you should definitely check out our most recent endeavour - an IPhone app called  AreYouSafe Atlanta . AreYouSafe Atlanta  lets you know how safe you are at any given time based on your current location within the city. All it takes is a quick tap to see a simple visual depiction of your safely level in addition to hyperlocal crime data broken down by type. Detailed crime statistics for the entire city of Atlanta, GA are pushed through a series of algorithms before producing a relative safety level for your exact geographic location. Walk/drive/bike/bus/canoe around the city and see your safety status update as you go! More cities coming soon...

If so you should definitely check out our most recent endeavour - an IPhone app called AreYouSafe DC . AreYouSafe DC lets you know how safe you are at any given time based on your current location within the city.  All it takes is a quick tap to see a simple visual depiction of your safely level in addition to hyperlocal crime data broken down by type.  Detailed crime statistics for the entire city of Washington, DC are pushed through a series of algorithms before producing a relative safety level for your exact geographic location. Walk/drive/bike/bus/canoe around the city and see your safety status update as you go! More cities coming soon...

What are we talking about here? So let’s say you have a map that depicts all of the countries you have visited.   It’s one thing to have a pin in France and show “Paris, 2008” in the pop up bubble, but it would be a heck of a lot cooler if you could click on that pin and see an image of you next to the Eifel Tower. Alternatively, maybe you’re looking to provide some information about France to the person looking at the map.   The ability to integrate an IFrame into the pin pop up bubble makes it easy to show the user a fully functional website about French tourism when they click on the pin. If you followed the couple tutorials that talked about hyperlinks, e-mail and Skype this should be a piece of cake…   What does it look like from a spreadsheet perspective? Just like our last 2 tutorials, the key here is all in the way you enter data into your Google Spreadsheet.  Again, a bit of HTML is all you need.   Take a look at the second column in the spreadsheet titled Image. ...

What are we talking about here? Lots of folks use MapAList to share contact information above and beyond just physical addresses.  We see maps all the time that include email addresses and/or phone numbers in the pin pop up bubbles.  What you may not know is that it's easy to make those email addresses and phone numbers "active".  In other words, you can create your map such that someone looking at it can click on the values in the pin pop up bubbles to initiate an email or a phone call (via Skype).  This makes your map more way more interactive.  Let's take a look at how it's done... What does it look like from a spreadsheet perspective? Just like hyperlinks, the key here is all in the way you enter data into your Google Spreadsheet.  A little HTML does the trick.  Using "mailto" and "callto" make this a pretty straightforward process. Scroll to the right in the frame below and take a look a the third column in the spreadsheet titled E-mail Li...