Geody - a world's search engine (feedback needed)

[ElfQrin]

I'm working on a search engine that returns coordinates and information about places on Planet Earth and other planets.

It supports NASA World Wind but also Celestia, and Google Earth and Stellarium (only for Planet Earth).

I need some feedback:
www.geody.com - the world's search engine

...especially if you have some ideas about tricks that could be done using KML.

[bull]

Looks pretty nice, good work, one thing I would love to see is a geocoder incorporated in the search, maybe using the local live api.

[Murgatroyd Shellback]

Yes, it seems to work very well. Good job.
Would be useful to be able to get Star Co-ordinates for SDSS also. Is that possible?

[ElfQrin]

Originally Posted by bull

Looks pretty nice, good work, one thing I would love to see is a geocoder incorporated in the search, maybe using the local live api.

uhmm... I'll think about it.

Originally Posted by Murgatroyd Shellback

Would be useful to be able to get Star Co-ordinates for SDSS also. Is that possible?

It would be nice but I think their database is too large (215 million unique objects) to be handled by the current Geody server. - http://www.sdss.org/dr5/

[m_k]

I got problems entering non-ASCII characters (like ęóąśłżźćń) - they're changed into decimal entities on the result page.

[ElfQrin]

Originally Posted by m_k

I got problems entering non-ASCII characters (like ęóąśłżźćń) - they're changed into decimal entities on the result page.

What browser are you using?

Can you read "Córdoba" in the search results here?
http://www.geody.com/geolook.php?wor...a&subm1=submit

[noiv]

Originally Posted by ElfQrin

...especially if you have some ideas about tricks that could be done using KML.

Perfect solution would be results as generated KML on serverside,
sending to browser and using a XSL Stylesheet for displaying proper XHTML.

Then you are ready for any application which understands KML.

Mapdex.org is using similar approach for search results, have a look
at generated XML in lower frame here:
http://www.mapdex.org/search/search....b=lyr&type=lyr

And since you are using an international database, you may
consider using an international language code like UTF-8
for both XML and XHTML.

Your search is very fast, keep it!

[m_k]

Opera (but same in Firefox and IE)
http://www.geody.com/geolook.php?wor...B&subm1=submit
(Łódź -> &#321, ód&#378)
And yes, Córdoba works ok.

[ElfQrin]

Originally Posted by noiv

Perfect solution would be results as generated KML on serverside,
sending to browser and using a XSL Stylesheet for displaying proper XHTML.

Then you are ready for any application which understands KML.

mumble mumble... mmm... not a bad idea...

Originally Posted by noiv

Your search is very fast, keep it!

Thanks, I've done everything I could to optimize and index the database. I don't know how much traffic can handle, though. Also, some areas are a bit slower because are more "detailed": for example, if you click on the map somewhere on the west coast of the USA, it will take more time than the average to get results.

[ElfQrin]

Originally Posted by m_k

Opera (but same in Firefox and IE)
http://www.geody.com/geolook.php?wor...B&subm1=submit
(Łódź -> &#321, ód&#378)
And yes, Córdoba works ok.

It seems to be a problem with the URL encoding. I'll check it.

The workaround is to search for "Lodz".

EDIT: It was rather a problem with the character encoding. Fixed.