This weekend I implemented some exciting new features.

1. All travel articles can (and should) now be tagged with latitude and longitude coordinates (don't worry, a tutorial will follow and I an always add them for you). With this new information, we can now generate a "World View" of our Travel Guides for easier navigation through the travel guide repository. When you click the link at the very top called "World Map", a view similar to the one below will open.
   
   The location of travel guides is marked by a red bubble. Clicking on one of the bubbles will bring up the short view of an article. Clicking on the header of that view will open up the article. Try it out, its a lot of fun to browse this way.
2. Users who are logged in will now see a new menu item (left menu) called "user locations". Every user who chooses to set his location on the map (go to my account -> edit -> Location Map, and pick your location on the map) can now be seen on this map. I guess if some of our users choose to set their location this could be a lot of fun.
3. You will now have the option to add zoomable google maps to your posts (forum, comment, travel article ...). There are many ways to do this, but one of the easiest would be to follow the link below the editor (picture below) called create macro.
   
   A new window will open where you will see a graphical user interface with a map. Just pick your location and parameters. When you are happy, just click on the map to set a point. Then copy the code shown below and paste it in your post to get something like this:

   [gmap |id=los angeles map |center=34.01681103381635, -118.34403991699219 |zoom=12 |width=600px |height=400px |control=Large |type=Map]

   This will be a great tool for showing the location of a hotel, or many other things. And best of all, since google has opened their API, there is no copyright violation when you post an interactive map.

4. Last but not least, when you look closely at the editor window (see picture above), you will see a new icon. The little blue camera is for uploading pictures to opentravelinfo.com and including them in your posts, while the little tree-like icon (line below) is for linking to external posts. Please remember that you do need to have copyright for pictures you upload (your pictures, you bought them) or that you have the consent of the copyright holder to do so or that the picture are released under any kind of license agreement (public domain, creative commons ...) that allows you to upload the picture.

Hopefully you will have a lot of fun with the new features.

TTFN