Creating a Dynamic Favicon with Cloudinary / / No Comments Ok, chalk this up to something I may never actually use in production, but I was curious how well the browser would handle changing the favicon of a tab on the fly, and combining that with Cloudinary to dynamically modify the source. The inspiration for this was something simple – Google Calendar’s favicon is unique per day, so for example, right now I see this: As there is – at most – 31 days in a month – my assumption is that they simply generated all 31 at some point and in their code serving up the web page, they select the right one. To be honest, it’s subtle and I don’t always notice it, but it’s a nice effect. I decided to take a look... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Cloudinary, creating, dynamic, Favicon
Mapping Every Russian Casualty in Ukraine / / No Comments Vladimir Putin is determined to conceal the enormous human cost of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine. As a result, Russians are largely denied an accurate accounting of how many of their friends, relatives, and fellow citizens have been killed.To cut through this fog of war, the independent Russian media outlet Mediazona and BBC Russian Service created 200.zona.media, an interactive mapping Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Casualty, every, Mapping, Russian, Ukraine
Dual Maps Goes 3D / / No Comments Dual Maps, an old Maps Mania favorite, has undergone a bit of a makeover this week. As you may have heard, Google recently removed its classic 45° bird’s-eye aerial imagery from the Maps JavaScript API. This oblique aerial perspective was one of the core synchronized views offered by Dual Maps. The removal of the bird’s-eye view has therefore prompted Map Channels to undertake a ground-up revamp Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Dual, goes, maps
Testing Diffbot’s Web Search API / / No Comments It’s hard to believe I first experimented with Diffbot nearly five years ago. You can see that first post up on the Adobe Medium account – Natural Language Processing, Adobe PDF Extract, and Deep PDF Intelligence. Since then I’ve tested out various APIs and features from them and was lucky enough to connect with them recently about a new initiative, a web search API. There’s multiple examples of this out in the wild already, but most just scrape/hack against Google. Google had an API, the Custom Search JSON API (I even covered it back when folks still talked about the JAMStack) but the API is now deprecated and officially turning off January 1, 2027. Diffbot’s API... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Diffbot's, search, Testing
Name that traffic cam! / / No Comments GeoGuessr has inspired countless spin-offs over the years, but NYCGuessr adds a clever twist to the formula by replacing Street View imagery with live traffic cameras from across New York City.The premise is simple. You’re shown a live feed from an NYC traffic camera and have 40 seconds to work out where it is. Drop a pin on a map, submit your guess, and score points based on how close you are Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: name, Traffic
Can GenAI help you win in Vegas? (2026) / / No Comments No! Thanks for reading. Still here? Cool. So way back in 2023, I built a little demo that I thought was kinda cool. Early in 2023 I had used Alpine.js and the excellent Deck API to build a simple web-based Blackjack game: Creating a Blackjack Game with Alpine.js and the Deck of Cards API. I then took that demo and connected to Google’s GenAI API, which back then was named Palm: Can GenAI help you win in Vegas?. It’s been a few years and I thought I’d take a stab at it again, this time making use of Chrome’s Prompt API. Technically I’d have much better luck using a bleeding edge Gemini model via a serverless function, and I may still take a stab at that later, but... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 2026, GenAI, help, Vegas
The Cheap Eats Map / / No Comments With the cost of living becoming a major concern for many people, finding affordable places to eat has become increasingly important. While restaurant review platforms often emphasize ratings, trends, or premium dining experiences, there is relatively little focus on helping people quickly locate genuinely low-cost meal options. Fooglemap hopes to address this gap by making budget-friendly Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Cheap, Eats
How Accurate Is Your Mental Globe? / / No Comments Can you name the missing city in this diagram? If you can then you could be the potential daily champion of City Angle – a fun new geography puzzle game.If you think you know your global geography because you can point out Italy on a blank map, City Angle is here to completely shatter your confidence.At its core, this game flips the standard “point-and-click” map trivia template on its head. Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Accurate, Globe, mental