Archive for September, 2006

Google Earth Version Stats

Saturday, September 16th, 2006

In trying to debug the KML for the Geograph exports, I had to make a decision about weather to move to KML 2.1 (GE4+ only), this set be wondering what versions are actually still in use and is it work still supporting GE3.So to that end produced this page. This aggregates all accesses to the various network links hosted on Nearby.org.uk, which of course is only a small corner of the net, wonder how this compares to Googles stats?

(disclaimer: I have a fondness for arbitrary stats!)

Conclusion: GE3 is still has about 27% market share, but could be dropping rapidly as people rush to try the new beta. (or could just be nobody using GE3 at the moment, to try the new features, but will go back for day-to-day work)

[OT: Oh and regular users might recognize that I finally got round to doing a little bit of personalization of the WordPress theme used around these parts, much nicer IMHO]

Geograph goes Temporal in GE 4

Saturday, September 16th, 2006

Have made a minor update to the Google Earth (KML) exports from Geograph, so that each image if possible will include the date the photo was taken to allow the new shiny Time Slider to function in the very Latest version version of GE 4 Beta (ones since 14th Sept ’06).

For example: Reflections on Geography topic. [Link takes you to webpage to choose download type, the Wide Area option is recommended as that allows you to move around and Zoom and still see a number of images. ]

GE 4 does UTM

Thursday, September 14th, 2006

Another rushed post but excited to see that the latest beta of Google Earth 4 (beta) has support for UTM references. Also pleased to see that the my gridlines line up well with the imbuilt references, in fact it seems that the gridlines go more accurate than the ones in Earth at the moment!

KML Grouper by State, Country, Continent…

Thursday, September 14th, 2006

Meant to be starting work, so will just duplicate my GEC post for the moment:

Well it looks like it works, so pleased to give you this think:

http://www.nearby.org.uk/group-kml.php

“… Takes a kml file full of placemarks, and organizes them into a folder tree structure, starting by continent and working down though country to state/county if possible…”

feedback is welcome,

In particular thinking of introducing a few more levels of customisation of the grouping, eg only by country, or skip continent etc, but see how it goes…

Huge thanks to geonames.org for the webservices that power this, and to pmaxfield2 for the idea!

P.S. Not every country has state/county breakdown, notably the UK, this is something that geonames is working to rectify, but even the US gov couldn’t get the data!