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Google Static Maps in a feed: Referer problem

Automated disclaimer: This post was written more than 15 years ago and I may not have looked at it since.

Older posts may not align with who I am today and how I would think or write, and may have been written in reaction to a cultural context that no longer applies. Some of my high school or college posts are just embarrassing. However, I have left them public because I believe in keeping old web pages alive—and it's interesting to see how I've changed.

I've successfully embedded Google Static Maps in an RSS feed that I'm working on, and it displays great in standalone feed readers. Unfortunately, if someone tries to subscribe to my feed using a web-based reader/aggregator (such as Google Reader), my images don't know how I'd get that)

  • Again, have the page act as a non-caching proxy for maps.google.com, which rejects the request as not matching my API key (I don't know how I'd get that)
  • Serve a different version of the feed pull images from geohash.info that grabs the API key.

    Is there some trick I can embed key-less static maps in their referer), using their API key for any site, so now I can use to make this work? Here are the options I can embed key-less static maps in

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    Tim McCormack lives in Somerville, MA, USA and works as a software developer. (Updated 2019.)

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