nearby.org.uk blog

I don’t know if anyone is interested in this stuff, but have been for a long time being trying to make sence of the various ‘geo’ properties operated by Google and quite a bit on how to get indexed and exposure for your content.

GeoIndex Overview Diagram

Links for the purple circles:

1. http://www.nearby.org.uk/gadget-for-kml.php
2. http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kmlSearch.html
3. http://maps.google.com/ig/submit?synd=mpl&pid=mpl
4. http://earth.google.com/submit.html
5. http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=68480
6. http://earth.google.com/gallery/index.html
7. http://www.panoramio.com/help#about_GE
8. http://bbs.keyhole.com/

probably incomprehensible, but hopefully useful to someone? Questions or feedback welcome.

Update: notable perhaps for its exclusion, is Outreach - Oops, version 2 perhaps?

As we near the Million mark on photos uploaded to Geograph British Isles, the coverage is really building up; and the project has definitly matured from just capturing a photo of every square (but that is still continuing!), to capturing each square in ‘depth’. We display the current coverage on the site as a depth map, but here we present some animations to watch the progress.

There are a number of interesting artefacts in this, if you are quick you can follow people as the hike long distance paths, but you can also see the people making concerted efforts to knock of hectads.

Of course the raw frames are available under Creative Commons, and a bonus prize to who can make an good mashup of these. The animations include both weekly frames, and monthly versions (labelled quick)

(the fire reference)

Small update to the My Maps support in GoKML, announced a few days ago; you can now edit the links contained in the file. Just goto your secret admin page, generated for your link.

People viewing your file in Google Maps will see the update soon, Google Maps caches it for a while.

People viewing in Google Earth however will not, as they downloaded a static file, which brings onto another point, if want them to auto update as well, could create a network link to your Container, using the standard GoKML form, (enter the url your container and choose appriate refresh period).

When using the Google’s My Maps feature you can display multiple maps at once simply by ticking the boxes, however the ‘Link to this Map’ will only ever include 1 map, so you can’t easily send a group of maps to someone.

… So a new script - this time under the gokml.net banner - for creating a ‘container’ KML that simply opens a bunch of maps at once - this KML is openabe in Google Earth, but also you can share the link so others can see your batch of My Maps at once in Google Maps.

Create a KML container for a group of My Maps

As a total aside I notice My Maps, now sport a (Geo)RSS feed

A while ago released a Compass Overlay, which (hopefully) makes reading directions of the navigation control easier. Well this new version does the same, but its (mostly) correct for the Magnetic Direction!

Magnetic Compass ^beta!

Note: its positioned to fit the navigation control of Google Earth 4.3, not the separate compass, which has only recently begun working for me… Updates a few seconds after stopping moving.

Now have a way to determine the magnetic variation at a location have some other ideas for using this in Google Earth, eg magnetic bearing along a line, but this is a starting point. For example in the uk the variation is often too small to be really seen on the tiny control.

Thanks to heywhatsthat.com for the pointer to a webservice that gives the variation.

Did someone mention a chart plotter? If so have a look-see:

Google Earth: Map Plotter

Its hot off the presses so don’t know what options it will need yet, just used three example zooms levels - other options would include the mobile map style. (You can change it by altering the link in Properties)

Also its standard Google Maps, as that is all the API offers. Ideally would be proper flight plan data, but would need a Static Map API to work.

Note: The map is centered on the camera position (so is ideal for the Flight Simulator) - and while it can be used in other modes it wont make much sense. If interest could make one that shows the center of the view itself.

Disclaimer: this is entering the gray area of what is possible with the Static Maps API, so might get pulled, etc.

More flight sim tools

Behold a new network link from nearby.org.uk:

Google Earth GPS

Once you have chosen a destination point, a small arrow will be shown in the bottom right of your Google Earth window, which points towards your destination! Ideal for use in the flight simulator, where you can play follow the arrow.

Note it only updates every 5 seconds, and comes with all sorts of disclaimers such as don’t use in life or death situations.

I’m colour blind myself (slightly), so sometimes feel the frustration when designs or sites lack the contrast to be visible easily, this is also why most of my sites make little use of colour, going mainly for grays with contrast.

Anyway this is just a post to point you towards a nice article on the colourlovers.com blog, which nicely demonstrates how others might see some popular sites as well as explaining a bit more on colour blind - well worth a read!

via

Google have recently added walking directions to the Directions feature on Google Maps.

This is a nice addition, and of course its early days, but does throw up some interesting results. The post says “If you’re going 10 km or less (some call this 6.2 miles)”, but if you want to test it out on longer routes, just add &dirflg=w to the url (use the “Link to this Page” link to get a link for the current map), and it does work!

Luckily it knows to avoid using the Motorway (phew!), but it still does favour bigger roads as noted here. Hopefully with time it can pickup on the shortest route rather than the ‘quickest’ which is generally what is used for driving.

I wonder if we will ever get to the point that it includes public footpaths here in the UK? (maybe it will via OSM?) - and as a refinement it could favour known ‘long distance footpaths’ …

Update: GEarthBlog also points out that can use my multi direction to KML tool, to view walking directions in Google Earth! Thanks Frank!

As a very rough, but somewhat nifty, proof of concept have created a little page, that answers (or attempts to!) the old age question of “Where is the best place to stop off for pizza along my route?”

Search along a route

as mentioned its very approximate, the search alogorithm is crude, I am certain there are better ways of doing it, anyone fancy taking it on?