Football, sports bars and maps

I stumbled upon a great resource from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the other day. Their Packers bar map helps readers find a place to drink with other Packers fans (almost) anywhere in the world (apparently not South Dakota).

Naturally I wanted to do the same for the sports teams we cover at the Des Moines Register. Digital projects editor Mike Corey was able to one-up the Packers map by making our map completely user-generated. Readers can upload bars directly to the map. The Green Bay example sends bars to a staff member who then adds them to the map.

Here’s our map of Iowa Hawkeyes, Iowa State Cyclones, Northern Iowa Panthers and Drake Bulldogs sports bars.

The great thing about our map is that we simply have to watch it to make sure nobody is abusing it. The great thing about the Packers map is that is uses ZeeMaps, which means that it doesn’t require knowledge of the Google Maps API (full disclosure: I now nothing about any APIs).

I have to admit that I’m pretty impressed with the work the Journal Sentinel has done using ZeeMaps, including this map of dining reviews.