We’ve just completed the deployment for Skyblox, a new, Atlanta based company that’s looking to bring managed Wifi to businesses around the country. They’ve just started their pilot run in the Virginia-Highlands neighborhood. The cornerstone of their product, and what differentiates them from other Wi-Fi providers, is using the hotspot to form a local community message board. This message board allows local businesses, community groups and individuals to make small posts around local events. The message board for a specific community will always display when a user signs on through a neighborhood hotspot. Or, if they choose, they can always see what’s happening in a specific part of town from viewing the WWW page from their home computer. Of course, it’s all powered by Appcelerator.

The Skyblox portal makes extensive use of the (relatively) new Yahoo Maps widget. Everything that happens on the map is controlled by just the following:

<app:yui_map id="mapContainer" api_key='apikey'
    initial_location="Atlanta, GA" zoom_level="8" max_zoom_out="8" height="230px" width="358px"
    on_marker_click='r:portal.select.location.request'
    on="l:add.map.markers then add_markers
          or l:portal.map.recenter then center_and_zoom
          or l:portal.map.recenter then best_fit after 1s
          or l:portal.map.best_fit then best_fit
          or r:portal.get.bloxlist.request then clear_map
          or r:portal.change.neighborhood.request then clear_map
          or l:select_map_location then select_location"
></app:yui_map>

That’s a lot of functionality for not much work. The end result looks like this:

If you want to try the map for yourself, you can always get the widget from the Appcelerator developer network. If you want to check out the hot spots in action, you’re only two blox away.

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