The X Marks Interactive Map

[Steve Ashton]

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud to announce that X Marks has a new feature to the forum. An interactive map made specially for X Marks.

There are a few ways to access the map.
The first a probably fastest and easiest is to click on the title bar of this, the Events section of the forum.
The second is to follow this link

http://www.zeemaps.com/X_Marks_the_scot.com

And the third is to copy and past the same link into a new tab of your browser.

Either way you will go directly to the X Marks Interactive Map.

OK, your looking at the Map. What good is it?
To answer that question let me give you some examples of some threads in our current forum that would be a lot easier to answer, and get answers to, than the system we use now.

How many times have you read a post by a newbie saying..."Hey, I'm in South East Lower Slobovia, Are there any others near me that can help get over being shy about wearing the kilt?"
Well, maybe Jim who lives in South West Lower Slobovia will see the post. And maybe not.
Now anyone can simply say "Go check out the Interactive Map. Look for little houses. I think Jim is in your area."

How many times have you read a post saying something like... "I'm going to be travelling to Lower Slobovia the weekend of the 34th. is there anyone who would like to meet up for a cold one? I'm buying."
Well, maybe Jim didn't see that post.
But now anyone can say..." Go look at the Map. I think Jim lives somewhere near there."
And before you know it Jim has a PM in his box saying...Wow, I'm going to be in town on the 34th. I just saw on the Map that you are about three blocks from my hotel. How about we meet up. I'm buying."

OK, Now let's say the Slobovian Rabble want to hold a Kilt Night. They can go to the Map and stick a Pin in the roof of the pub they have chosen. Anyone who wants to see the details of the Kilt Night just has to click on the pin and up comes a box with the name of the pub, the address, the date and time of the Kilt Night and the phone no. of the host. They can even get driving instructions right from their house to the pub. All in one location.
And an additional future feature of the map will be that events like Kilt Nights, Highland Games, Music Festivals etc. will self-delete after the event is over to keep the map from getting too crowded.

Now, we come to the Members Location Map Pins. When you want to put a pin in the map to let other members know where you are you can add a photo or your avatar. You can enter your screen name and your real name. And if you are uncertain if you want others to know your real street address simply stick the pin in your neighbors roof.

One really nice feature of this map over the last map we tried is we will own it. It will be maintained on a private server. It is run on the Google Earth/Google Maps system and the satellite images will be automatically updated when Google Earth is.

Do you play with Google Earth? This map uses the same images as Google Earth does. You can zoom right in and see into your own backyard.
This map can be viewed in Map mode showing streets and city names, in satellite mode to see trees and buildings, and in hybrid mode to see both at the same time.

I'm not going to give exact detailed instructions on how to use the map right now. I thought it would be more fun to let you go explore and figure out some of the features for yourself.

For right now there are 5 map pins available.
Members Location
Kilt Night Location
Highland Games Location
Music Festival Location
Meet and Greet Location
If you see something you would like to be added to the map, then please post to this thread and I'll see if it is possible to do them.

Until then go have fun.

If you are asked for a password enter xmarks

Oh, and as a p.s., if any of our members is really good at designing map pin icons we could us some really nice ones. The ones we have there now were downloaded from one of those free sites and they are not as nice as I know some of our members could produce. If you want to give designing the official X Marks Map Pins send me a PM.