Tuesday 9 December 2008

In The Lab

You know, I keep on coming up with all sorts of wierd and wonderful stuff to add to Free Car Check. One thing I thought which could be interesting is knowing where around the country your car has been in its life. Free Car Check can already pull your MOT results so this is pretty easy...

... until you come to actually turning those results into locations. I've been playing with the Google Maps API and managed to get it working over the weekend. It's currently only available on the development site but it should make a reasonably cool addition.

I've also been playing around with VIN numbers. Theres a fair amount of data you can get from these if you know how to read them. Since I'm getting a large number of international visitors and it'd be another useful addition to have I've started on my own decoder. So far I've got continent and country nailed down, but really need a comprehensive list of WMI numbers (which represent manufacturers) to get myself off the ground. I've found a few sources so I'll have to see how it goes.