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?

I’ve been following the blogosphere re the recent introduction of the Google Earth API. Which is a slightly lightweight version of Google Earth packaged in a browser, but with a quite rich Javascript/KML hybrid scripting interface.

There has (IMHO) been some misconceptions about exactly what this is, the hype (and I partly fell into the same trap) seems to surround its bringing Google Earth (aka 3D) to the browser - which it certainly does, but as Ed Parsons notes:
“in that context it should become clear that the big announcement of the Google Earth plug-in, is more about adding a API to earth, than bringing 3D functionality to the browser.”
its not the biggest thing - its that it opens Google Earth to scripting!

And being browser based brings reasonably familiar, and cross platform, Javascript to the table, effectively obsoleting the unsupported COM API (and ActionScript?).

As many blogs note 3D in the browser is not that new, LiveMaps (or what ever it called now. virtual earth?) has had it for a while, not to mention WorldWind (java), and the myriad of other 3D globes.

(however the one area this is good on the web, is it allows much larger datasets to be displayed and intereacted with - in already existing Google Maps API mashups - with little work)

Google has just announced a new Google Earth API - which allows embedding and fully functional Google Earth in just about any webpage. Even is easily intergratable with Google Maps API mashups - with very little extra code. (takes a number of seconds for that news to sink in!)

Be sure to checkout the samples, (particularly the milktruck demo!), I’ve also started trying it out with a few demos of my own…

…Windows only btw…

Expect A LOT MORE from this very flexible looking API - the JS interface can quickly interact with objects (API is based around KML) and gets pretty good control of interface options.

Update: mentioned on gearthblog.com which is a good introduction about what this is and what its not!

Update2: and to show it can basically be added to a ‘real world’ Gmaps mashup, in a few lines of code, see here

Recently geohash.org was released; the premise: short easy links that encode a location. The website offers instant conversion, but as the algorithm is Public Domain, Lordelph was quick to implement a php class, and I could quickly add the conversion to my existing conversion API. Convert a postcode to geohash anyone?

Updating the documentation noticed the API was last updated in 2005 - gulp, how time flies! Anyway as a celebration have upped the throttling on the API, now three times the previous limit. Running on much improved hardware than when it was launched so maybe the limit can be tweaked even more, will run some analysis of its impact - it already seems the API is a minor part of the overall load on the server - particularly against the Google Earth layers.

For a project wanted to create a small script to make generation of network link wrappers to KML content easy, but then I thought could have it create ’short’ urls, ala tinyurl.com, to make reuse easy. But then thought if going to that trouble might as well make it a full blown mini application, so I give you

goKML.net :: Short Links to KML content

I think it turned out pretty well (esp for just an evenings hacking) - it even has an element of ‘design’ - which is saying something!

So if you want to create a network link wrapper with the minimum of fuss, and might enjoy having it as a short url, then give it a go.

Of course there are still a few things that could be done, but will leave these for another day…

• Auto discover the ‘title’
• Intelligence for ‘My Map’s - eg support multiple pages, and maybe some other KML types.
• Actually make the admin page useful - display stats (they are stored already) , and edit the link
• A public gallery of popular/new etc links - maybe even some sort of search - esp if we can do rudimentary indexing of the content (when fetch the title)
• Support for named links eg could choose gokml.net/fredsparty.kml
• Complete the support for the various network link options - particulaly making it easier to select the appropriate settings.
• Maybe even support for forwarding the link by email (and/or sending the admin link to yourself)
• Any thing you can think of - let me know!

The people at Live.com (Microsoft!) have been making some huge improvements to their map system of late, adding lots of data in both 2D and 3D. maps.live.com has long been good in the UK as it uses imagery from getmapping which is at least 2m resolution, but 25cm in many places. It’s now been backed up by lots of Birds Eye imagry which are static photos taken at an angle, which is great for visualising cities. How these are available in the 3D view (which is currently downloading so havent tried it…) ! Also now supported is visualling KML, GPX and GeoRSS files.
Anyway that was kinda rambley, the point of this post was to highlight small feature I found by accident and not sure it been highlighted on other blogs, namly you can subscribe to a RSS feed for many collections, including a KML or GPX file directly, effectively giving a KML to (Geo)RSS converter!

Example: Recent Geographs KML file as GeoRSS

(looks like we can input any KML/KMZ url in there!)

Ever played Tetris? Know your geographical areas? If so then its time to play Statetris,

“Statetris is an interesting game mixing aspects of the popular game ‘Tetris’ and geography. Instead of positioning the typical Tetris blocks, you position states/countries at their proper location.”

…even better a UK version has just been released!

As the project diversifies to new areas, the creators are facing some interesting challenges to cope with our diverse world. For example the UK is a problem as its so tall, so doesn’t fit on screen as nice as some other areas, not to mention our confusing and changing geography! The Netherlands on the other hand is quite small, so has capitals added to add interest.

What’s your best time?

(Very) Simplistic tool for trying out a OpenSearch Description file :

http://www.nearby.org.uk/opensearch/

… includes a Gmap to make defining the lat/long and/or bbox easy. (if the file has geo extensions)

(Just submit the same file again, if you update it. btw don’t submit a definition file you don’t want to become public, but remember it is called ‘open’

I realised after mentioning we updated the description file on www.geograph.org.uk, that it wasn’t fully tested, (hate testing, but not adverse to spending 2 hours scripting a tester), and in fact this tool highlighted a mistake!

Hope it of interest, feedback welcome,

Andrew over at highearthorbit.com recently put together a proposal for a Geo Extension to Opensearch.

Naturally I couldn’t not add it to the Geograph OpenSearch definition, will have to keep an eye on the logs to see if there is any take up…

This also reminds me that nearby.org.uk is in need of some loving, there are some datasets locked away within that could be made searchable (of course geographically!) in this way.
One thing that struck me reading the proposal, is that a method to specify geographical extents that the engine works with. Thereby a sane search initiator could know that searching Geograph for locations in Austrialia is likely to end in tears….

Something like a simple:

<opensearchgeo:extents>
<georss:box>49,- 9.5,62,2.3</georss:box>
</opensearchgeo:extents>

Would probably do it

Update: Sorry, just relised the tags didnt show up, seems TinyMce inside wordpress, decodes entities on its own, so double(!) encoding it is then.