What's new on Photospots
Written: December 5th 2009
The new version of Photospots is now live and involves quite a lot of new development. In fact there is almost nothing in the new photospots that was in the old version, at least as far as code is concerned.
Photospots is running on an entirely new platform which I hope will make it easier for me to make incremental changes and respond to featue requests.
Key changes
The most immediate change that you will notice if you used the old version of Photospots is that I am now asking for some information about you.
Under the old system I asked you to specify a username and password but no more. The new system switches to an email based login system so at a minimum you will need to provide an email address. You won't get any emails you don't want, but having the address allows me to offer some email based options.
In addition you can, but do not need to, specify your website address, flickr url, Home town and flickr username. These will enable additional functionality, some of which is already running on the new version.
Information, like your web address and flickr url are used throughout the site where previously you had to reenter this information.
New functionality
In addition to changing the way the site operates I have added some new features.
It is now possible to differentiate between parking with restrictions, such as having to pay, and free parking, add viewpoints to the map, and create routes using up to 20 numbered markers.
Added to that, for UK users, it is no possible to switch between Google and Ordnance Survey maps, which are much useful for anything that isn't a road.
Finally, each Photospot now features information about the sunrise and sunset including the time and an estimated direction as well as a general five day weather forecast, though these have yet to be tested against reality.
I still have work to do on the site, I will be rolling out more features over the coming months and fixing any bugs that appear.
In the meantime you can subcribe to this blog, or follow progress using twitter @photospots