Newsletter Distribution areas

Here's a digital area map for the neighborhood.
I'm working on plotting the local businesses on here that Jake dug up, and which are stored in the CiviCRM database right now.

Currently, I have running code to retrieve the various types of business as individual groups (e.g. restaurants, bars, bookstores, etc.) and store each organization's key details to disk in .kml files. I've implemented a simple caching system, to buffer the database back-end against repeated enquiries; reading in a .kml file for plotting is at least a hundred times faster.

Work in progress includes:

1. complete the user interface, so that a list of business types appears, each with a checkbox. Clicking the checkbox will plot all the points of the corresponding type.
2. add listener coding for the distribution areas, so hovering over them displays their name/ID, and identifies the relevant distribution crew and their contact info

before the thing is really ready to be used, there will need to be some more data maintenance work, to update the CiviCRM entries. We didn't have correct street addresses for all of the orgs, so I made some up for geocoding purposes. We'll also want to get web site addresses and email addresses for as many more as possible.

there's also the prospect of linking these to the much-ballyhooed "classified ads" we're apparently going to run -- or perhaps, the feature sections that a somewhat deeper and richer connection may eventually generate.

Beyond that, I expect to add the Google StreetView; Zillow's property value stats beckon; and integrating the PortlandOnline databases, etc. etc.

and of course, there's the Big Enchilada: the residential database, complete with obfuscation capability for the most delicate souls.