Farmers’ markets meet Google Maps! Don at L.A. Stories created an LA Farmers’ Market Mapplet —

Now you can get a quick snapshot of all the farmers’ markets near you — plus figure out when and where they are without finding and sorting through the many different farmers’ market websites then manually entering each addy into Gmaps yourself.

The markets are even color coded and sorted by day of the week! So if you do all your grocery shopping on Saturdays, you can filter to see just the farmers’ markets open on that day –

The one downside’s that you have to first add the map to the “My Maps” function in Gmaps — a rather cumbersome process — to use the thing. The steps:

1. On Gmaps, click on “My Maps,” then click “Add Content”

2. To the right of the “Search Google Maps Content” button, click “Add by URL”

3. Type in http://www.preppylion.com/fm/fm.xml in the URL box

4. Hit “Back to Google Maps,” and you’ll see a “Los Angeles Farmers’ Markets” link added under “My Maps.”

So far I’ve noticed that the new farmers’ market at LA City Hall’s missing, but otherwise, it looks pretty damn good to me.

Still, Don seems to be a bit of a perfectionist — he says he wants it “rock-solid before submitting it to the google mapplet directory” — a move that’d hopefully make the app easier to find and add.

So — check it out, and let Don know ’bout any chinks in the mashup. And enjoy the local fruits and veggies :)

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