Walter's Walk-a-meter Help and Documentation

The team who created this Mashup all work at Murdoch University Library; we are not all coders, mathematicians, geocachers, sustainability experts nor are we dieticians.

Walter's Walk-a meter is named in honour of Sir Walter Murdoch (1874-1970) after whom the Murdoch University is named. He was famous for his intelligence, wit and humanity and the fact that he was a keen walker. Living in the age before the internet Sir Walter might have been amused by the liberty taken here.

Read more about Sir Walter here http://www.murdoch.edu.au/vco/secretariat/records/people/sirwaltermurdoch.html
We made this as an example of what you could do with some data in a mashup.   We are not 100% certain that  the data is correct, and assumptions and rounding were made with the calculations and there was something the math gurus were saying about curvatures of the earth and longitude and approximations and the earth bulging, but I didn't get it, though in a nutshell it basically it meant its not exact.

We got most of the math and effects from here:

• http://www.curvycorners.net/ for the rounded corner of the options part
• http://script.aculo.us/ for effects and sliders (say the show/hide)
• http://wikimedia.org to find the internet, options and the search icons
• http://maps.google.com for the map :P It's Google Map API Version 3 (with sensor for GPS device)
• http://24ways.org/2007/supersleight-transparent-png-in-ie6  for the trick to make sure that all of our png files are displayed correctly

With the routes we take, they are as the crow flies and do not take into account things like topography or things in your way like trees, rivers or big buildings like parliament house.

This will skew things like the CO₂ produced and whether you really could cycle at 20km an hour for 40 km, uphill, in the wind and quite possibly through a river.

We did get the CO₂ produced data from here: http://www.carpages.co.uk/co2/

We had to average them out a bit and they are based on UK vehicles, so before we get a letter from GMH, you're right, your car probably does better than that at CO₂ emissions.

The same thing goes with the calories burned, we got the formula from an article, there is probably someone (and we hope in the name of academic discussion there is) that disagrees with the whole thing.

You can see where we got it from here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10993420

The carbon footprint data we got from here: http://timeforchange.org/what-is-a-carbon-footprint-definition

I can't imagine someone won't disagree with that at some point.

We are also a bit limited to what data we had available, so if your nearest public toilet is 5000km away, speak to your local government official and get them to jump on board to get more data out there.

In short, we have done our best, but there are definitely some things that ensure that this could only be used as a rough guide and not for things like precision drilling and of course consult your doctor about weight loss, they are the experts, we just made a mashup.

Other attributions:

• Banner: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fchouse/2611238650/ Carlo Nicora, "Green"  June 25, 2008 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution.
• Modified Circle Code available: http://jerschneid.blogspot.com/2008/12/simple-way-to-draw-circle-with-google.html
• Modified Distance Code available: http://snipplr.com/view/2531/calculate-the-distance-between-two-coordinates-latitude-longitude/
• Other Mathematical Data from: http://www.peertrainer.com/LoungeCommunityThread.aspx?ForumID=1&ThreadID=48138 (calories burned by exercise)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_equivalent (MET for a leisurely stroll)

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What does Walter's walk-a-meter do?

Walter's Walk-a-meter is a customisable interactive map that allows users to plot walking times and distances and calculates calories burnt (with Freddo Frog equivalents). It also displays the amount of CO₂ produced if you were to drive various vehicles and how much power this would consume.

Information in this Mashup includes; BBQ's, Playgrounds, Public Internet, Public Toilets and Schools.

The interface:

Firstly, Walter tries to guess where you are currently located based on your GPS coordinated (if you have that sort of thing on your phone) or your internet address.

The problem with internet addresses is that it can pick up the location of your ISP rather than where you live.
You have a couple of options to correct this, click and drag the pointer to the right place or enter where you should be in the box at the top of the screen that says "Your current location".

You current location is identified by the white house with the green roof:

You will see that there are two coloured circles surrounding your location, one is green and the other red.

The green circle represents a 30 minute radius from your location (by default) and the red circle represents a 3km radius from your location (by default).

You will also see you can switch between different modes in the top right corner:

The default is hybrid, but if you want just satellite or you find it easier to visualise as a map then select the appropriate option.

There is a zoom function on the left hand side, The plus zooms in and the minus zooms out.
 

You can also move about the map, by clicking and dragging the map in the direction you want, or if you wish you can navigate with the arrow keys.

The options:

If you click on the options button :

This will provide you with a host of different options:

You can choose your travel speed by dragging the blue box:

You can choose you weight:

You can choose the type of car you drive:

These three factors will change the calculations that appear when you select your destination.
You can also add locations to the map by clicking on the red boxes in the legends area:

For example, clicking on  will give you BBQ locations on your map. These are represented by the sausage logo. If you wish to remove the BBQ locations, just click on the icon again.

In the case above this shows all BBQ locations within a 30 minute walk of parliament house in the ACT (green circle).

And in this case all playgrounds within 3km of my location (red circle):

If you click on the location it will provide you with more information:

It will give you :

• the distance to the BBQ -> 1.5 KM
• how long it will take to get there (based on your selected speed) -> 22.5 minutes
• how many calories you will burn for your selected weight -> 55.13
• the amount of CO₂ your selected type of car would be produce if you drove there instead -> 0.21 kg
• and what could be done with the same amount of CO₂ -> power a laptop for 6.72 hours.

Please bear in mind the first portion of these instructions, all of this data is approximate and is only a general guide.

But nothing in the legend interests me.

We did create a custom marker.

Just click on the  in the legend and it will add a new marker to the map:

You can click and drag it to anywhere on the map, click it again and it will give you the same sort of information:

In this case:

• the distance to the BBQ -> 4.5 KM
• how long it will take to get there (based on your selected speed) -> 67.5 minutes
• how many calories you will burn for your selected weight -> 165.38
• the amount of CO₂ your selected type of car would be produce if you drove there instead -> .62 kg
• and what could be done with the same amount of CO₂ -> power a laptop for 19.84hours.

Please bear in mind the first portion of these instructions, all of this data is approximate and is only a general guide.

Thanks again for having a walk with us and Walter, hope it comes in handy and don't forget to vote.
The Murdoch Team.

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The Murdoch Team consists of:

• Ploy Tangtulyangkul
• Aaron Trenorden
• Helen Bronleigh
• Kate Freedman
• Ian Lee
• Kate Makowiecka
• With special thanks to Dr. Duncan Farrow.

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We also provide a basic API for the reusability purposes. Our API allows developer to get an access to the data that we used in this project.  This basic API provides a JSON response of a list of locations within 15 kilometres based on the provided latitude and longitude. This response also contains information; such as, name, address, latitude, longitude, distance, a total number of records and the nearest record. The response is in the following format:

{"result":{     "records":[{         "type":"5",         "name":"BBQ",         "address":"REMEMBERANCE PARK ACT",         "lat":"-35.2791278",         "lng":"149.152259",         "distance":4.10114681198     }],     "count":23,     "nearest":1.37293070436 }}

(Screenshot saved from JSON editor by Thomas Frank: http://www.thomasfrank.se/downloadableJS/JSONeditor_example.html)

The API requires user to send 2 parameters: lat and lng via a HTTP GET method. Below is the illustration of a simple request:

http://mashup.tweaket.com/getBBQs.php?lat=-35.3081017&lng=149.1242981

This is a list of all available API for this mashup project:

• http://mashup.tweaket.com/getSchools.php
• http://mashup.tweaket.com/getPlaygrounds.php
• http://mashup.tweaket.com/getPublicToilets.php
• http://mashup.tweaket.com/getBBQs.php
• http://mashup.tweaket.com/getPublicInternet.php

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