[Elecraft] a cool software Idea

[David Woolley]

dw wrote:
> You tell the software what your location is.
> You type in a callsign and it shows you not only the name, city, state
> of the call.
> But it also displays a map showing the approximate location on a map and
> indicates crow-fly distance.
> 
> One could easily do this in two steps using online hamcall and then
> google map I guess.

I would expect this to be a breach of the terms of service for the 
common online call databases.  Like most information web sites, they 
exist to sell targetted advertising and their callsign database is 
commercially valuable.

Google maps is probably OK, as you would still allow through the Google 
advertising.

Note that there are mapping sites (specifically www.openstreetmap.org) 
that have a funding model similar to US National Public Radio, and 
moreover aim to produce royalty free map data, but I'm not so sure that 
it would be easy to set up a callsign database on that basis, except 
possibly for the USA, where the data is possibly condidered public 
domain due to being obtained by a federal agency.

The actual software could be rather simple, although a GUI interface 
would compromise that.  The real issue are the geographic and callsign 
databases.

Incidentally, logging in is valuable for advertising funded databases, 
as it makes it easier to target advertising at individual.
-- 
David Woolley
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