Project Idea: Tor server map
Lately I’ve been bored and looking for small, quick-win tech projects to keep me on my toes. I’ve run across just the thing:
One of the items on the list of Tor Volunteer tasks which the Tor team have requested volunteers take care of is the development of a map of Tor servers around the world. As it happens, I’ve been wanting to try out the new Yahoo! Maps API, and this seems like just the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.
My plan thus far is to write some Ruby script to download the Tor server list and dump it into a sqlite3 database. All entries in the database will then be geocoded, initially with the [hostip.info IP city/country lookup], maybe later with the MaxMind GeoLite City database. A cron job will periodically update the list to reflect new servers and updated geocoding.
The information in this database will then be exposed as a GeoRSS feed, which can then be overlayed onto a Yahoo! map.
Should be an easy and yet spiffy project…