Tech Forum Archive

Electronic Pass-Along Cards

14 postsstarted by Ray DeGraw-p40 5,359 viewsoriginal topic

Ray DeGraw-p40
New Member
#1
Our stake is making pass-along cards that show each building and directions to the building, along with the address for mormon.org and a space to put a small sticker to announce an event in the stake. As part of this project, we want to make these cards available electronically - for members to be able to be send them via e-mail and link to them on their personal blogs.

What would be the best way to do this - and I am not a technology expert by any stretch.
RossEvans
Senior Member
#2
A printed map gets complicated, in part because of copyright.

But as for the electronic link to embed in an email, etc., a quick-and dirty method would be to use Google Maps interactively:
  1. Go to maps.google.com
  2. Search on the address of your building.
  3. When the map displays, click on "Link" in the upper-right corner.
  4. Copy the link labeled "Paste link in email or IM"
  5. Paste that link into your email, etc.
For example, here is a link to my meetinghouse address. It took a few seconds to create. The pasted link looks like this:

Code: 

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=1000+Rutherford+Ln,+Austin+TX&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=40.732051,68.027344&ie=UTF8&z=16&iwloc=addr

But that complicated link was created for me by following the directions above.

Similar functionality is available on Yahoo's maps.yahoo.com or MS maps.live.com

Perhaps someday the Church will create such links directly from its new meetinghouse-locator web site, maps.lds.org
russellhltn
Community Administrator
#3
It's simpler then that.

Code: 

http://maps.lds.org/?unitId=101826
Or you can point to the webpage. The first page is open to the public.

Code: 

https://secure.lds.org/units/home/0,9781,600-1-7-101826,00.html
Interesting, the new maps.lds.org doesn't work from stake web pages.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
RossEvans
Senior Member
#4
RussellHltn wrote:It's simpler then that.

Code: 

http://maps.lds.org/?unitId=101826

I guess the "someday" I wished for above is already here :)
russellhltn
Community Administrator
#5
I didn't know it either. I just tried to find a way to get the same map you get from the LUWS page. I didn't realize that maps.lds.org was "live". Or that the resulting URL was so simple.

But in the process I uncovered a bug in the stake functionality. It don't work.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
RossEvans
Senior Member
#6
RussellHltn wrote:I didn't know it either. I just tried to find a way to get the same map you get from the LUWS page. I didn't realize that maps.lds.org was "live". Or that the resulting URL was so simple.

But in the process I uncovered a bug in the stake functionality. It don't work.

I'm not sure it would be considered a bug, or just out of scope of the current release. Stake centers typically are "meetinghouses" for several wards. (In fact, the example you posted was for a single ward that happens to meet at a stake center.) But since the "Meetinghouse Locator" -- now titled "Find Places of Worship" -- is designed primarily to find normal Sunday worship services and ward assignments, it does not surprise me that stake unit numbers don't apply in that interface.

In any case, I gather that you discovered this URL syntax yourself, and it is not documented. Right? Or have I just failed to find the instructions?
russellhltn
Community Administrator
#7
boomerbubba wrote:I'm not sure it would be considered a bug, or just out of scope of the current release.
Uh, I guess I'm not communicating. Go to the LUWS page for your stake. Click on Map. It doesn't work. If it's "out of scope" then the link shouldn't be there. ;)

Yes, I found this out on my own by going to the LUWS page and clicking "map". My idea was simply to use the "church" map rather then google or yahoo since there was some copyright concerns. The simplicity of the results surprised me.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
RossEvans
Senior Member
#8
RussellHltn wrote:Yes, I found this out on my own by going to the LUWS page and clicking "map". My idea was simply to use the "church" map rather then google or yahoo since there was some copyright concerns. The simplicity of the results surprised me.

Nice find.

Even using the Church interface, I'm still wondering about copyright issues that might arise from printing lots of pass-along cards from these maps, which originate with Google or Microsoft and their licensor map providers Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ . At a minimum the printed rendering, if allowed, should preserve all the copyright notices in the map images.

I see no problem at all embedding the URL in a mail message, blog post, etc.

IANAL
Ray DeGraw-p40
New Member
#9

Thank You!!

Thanks. I am playing around with what you've provided. I think we probably will stick to embedding the links into e-mails and blogs, so there won't be any printing issues. I really like the live, active maps for the links - rather than a static map we would create and people would have to copy as an image. However, we probably will create our own simple directions for any print versions of the cards in order to avoid any copyright issues - and save them to a web page people can print if they want to give someone a hard copy.

Again, thanks!
RossEvans
Senior Member
#10
Just as a footnote, for street-map images without all the legal complications, you might check out OpenStreetMap.org.
techgy
Community Moderators
#11
RussellHltn wrote:Uh, I guess I'm not communicating. Go to the LUWS page for your stake. Click on Map. It doesn't work. If it's "out of scope" then the link shouldn't be there. ;)

Yes, I found this out on my own by going to the LUWS page and clicking "map". My idea was simply to use the "church" map rather then google or yahoo since there was some copyright concerns. The simplicity of the results surprised me.
I noticed that when you click on the "Map" link from a stake site that it's passing the address of the stake center to a javascript routine. The resulting map page doesn't contain that passed address so no map appears. Looks like a bug in the javascript routine. If you click on the "Map" link from a ward site, the link passes the unit number instead. The javascript routine probably has a database that pulls up the unit address and creates the map. That routine is working.
Have you read the Code of Conduct?
kennethjorgensen
Community Moderators
#12
Ray DeGraw wrote:Our stake is making pass-along cards that show each building and directions to the building, along with the address for mormon.org and a space to put a small sticker to announce an event in the stake. As part of this project, we want to make these cards available electronically - for members to be able to be send them via e-mail and link to them on their personal blogs.

What would be the best way to do this - and I am not a technology expert by any stretch.
If anybody has good experience with software (preferably free) that can create nice clean HTML emails supported by as many email programs as possible (no css in them) then I would appreciate to hear.

We have all received nice looking newsletters or latest on offer from amazon etc but what software is out there doing this which could also be used for things like these electronic Stake pass-along cards?

Is it as simple as creating an HTML file, upload it to see it will display on some webspace and then now insert the text of that same html file into your emails? (in html format)? I am after hearing if anybody has any experience of it.

From my point of view it could be used for church newsletters, bulletins, pass-along cards etc in addition to creating PDF files and hard copies like we do for our newsletter.
mkmurray
Senior Member
#13
dkjorgi wrote:Is it as simple as creating an HTML file, upload it to see it will display on some webspace and then now insert the text of that same html file into your emails? (in html format)? I am after hearing if anybody has any experience of it.
In my experience, it is that simple. I would keep the HTML as simple as possible though, and don't get too fancy. But it should work just fine. I can't really think of any restrictions that you should follow in your HTML.
kennethjorgensen
Community Moderators
#14
mkmurray wrote:In my experience, it is that simple. I would keep the HTML as simple as possible though, and don't get too fancy. But it should work just fine. I can't really think of any restrictions that you should follow in your HTML.
That sounds good. I will give it a go next time someone asks for it.