Global Noms

Inspiration

Inspired by “I Know Where Your Cat Lives”, an interactive map that shows the whereabouts of 15 million images tagged “cat”, we want to stalk foodies around the world instead!

What it does

Globalnoms.com maps Instagram users who post photos with #nom with their exact location. Now you can find out where and what everyone is eating anytime to find inspiration for the next food hunt!

How we built it

This project was built using Instagram API and Mapbox API using Javascript. Parse was used to store data gathered from Instagram, and retrieve it for the points on the world map.

Challenges we ran into

It was particularly challenging for us to link Instagram information, including longtitude, latitude, image ID, comments, and photo urls to the map. The pinpoint of location was our major problem. Getting the icons to show up was one thing, having them correctly placed was another. The longitude and latitude data is flipped in mapbox and we had to reverse the order. Other than that, Parse was a brand new concept to us. The process of retrieving information from it was time-consuming because it was hard to identify where the coding went wrong. Finally, our website does not appear at the domain's url because domain.com is still propagating to dns servers.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

The launching of our own website that unites foodie spirits is the most satisfying experience ever! We are also proud to have solved problems that seemed impossible to deal with.

What we learned

The learning progress was even more fruitful. It was our first time using Parse and Github and we had fun experimenting with them!

What's next for Global Noms

We hope that our website will gain more popularity and people will fine the fact that the map links instagram food photos with users’ exact locations extremely helpful and inspiring!