Geograph « nearby.org.uk blog

Archive for the ‘Geograph’ Category

opensearching the geoweb… (and limiting it)

Thursday, June 21st, 2007

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.

Posted in Experimental, geo, Geograph, opensearch | 1 Comment »

Google Maps – Mapplets; a quick Geograph demo…

Tuesday, May 29th, 2007

Wow, Google have again gone and introduced an almost draw-dropping new feature to Google Maps – Mapplets. Put simply they allow you to create mini-map-mashups, but as they run on maps.google.com, visitors can view your content along side the normal content of Google Maps – but even more interestingly visitors can load more than one Mapplet at a time, combining the data from each mashup onto ONE map!!!

And it turns out they are really easy to code for been based on Google Gadgets (which I haven’t used before) and Google Maps API (which I have ), but I also congratulate Google on including in the package ‘Developer’ mapplets that make developing relatively painless.

Anyway onto the demos, just visit http://maps.google.com/preview (it’s a Developer orientated demo for the moment), click the ‘Mapplets’ tab, goto ‘Add Content’ and see what takes your fancy. To try out my (very humble!) demo, use the ‘Add by URL’ and paste in the following URL: http://www.geograph.org.uk/stuff/gmapplet0.xml

(more about maplets in the post linked in the first paragraph!)

Posted in Experimental, Geograph, Google Maps, KML, Web Services | 5 Comments »

Feeding GeoRSS and KML content to your Google Maps API based Map!

Thursday, March 22nd, 2007

All hail the new GGeoXml class, just introduced into the Google Maps API! Now you can easily (usually 1 or 2 lines!) add content that you have in KML/Z or GeoRSS to a Google Map in your API page.

This is the same functionality that has been on the main Maps site (well the GeoRSS support is new!) for a while: nice for this to migrate to the API.

TIP: to try it don’t forget to use &v=2.x in your api loader to get the latest version that includes the GGeoXml.

To celebrate here is a Geograph Demo – following some testing will make it an official feature.

Posted in Geograph, GeoRSS, Google Maps, KML, online maps, RSS | 2 Comments »

Geograph Superlayer v2

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

Following the recent introduction of the Superlayer to explore Geograph Photographs in Google Earth, have updated so that transitions between ‘levels of detail’ are much nicer, as well as sporting new custom icons!

If you have previously downloaded it then you should get the update automatically – otherwise right click the superlayer in My Places and select ‘refresh’ to fetch the latest version. It seems sometimes GE doesn’t reload the styles – so if all you see is a mass of yellow push-pins, restart GE and it should then return to nice circles and blue camera icons.

Or just download it here:

Geograph Superlayer (Google Earth Version 4+ REQUIRED)

Posted in Experimental, Geograph, Google Earth, Location Links, network-link, SuperLayer | 2 Comments »

Geograph SuperLayer for Google Earth

Monday, March 12th, 2007

If you have Google Earth version 4 and broadband then you might be interested in clicking this link:

Â· Geograph SuperLayer Â·

By opening the above link you should be able to view the whole Geograph image collection directly in Google Earth. This has been possible in a number of ways for a while, but this does so in a much more compelling way (i.e. a single small download!).

This exploits the new Region functionality of GE4 to only fetch and load detail as you zoom in, in this way the view starts depicting a course overview of the current coverage, zooming in reveals more detail until pictures themselves become visible. (the ‘Super’ is adopted from Google’s term of SuperOverlays – overlays that load via nested regions)

In particular this is all pre-compiled and compressed, so should be fairly quick to download and is friendly as possible on bandwidth. Overall the layer consists of 102,965 files at 450MB compressed so there is a lot of data available, however you will download a lot less than this, probably on the region of a couple hundred files totalling about 2MB in a typical session.

As a small refinement, when a icon represents a single photo (a camera icon) if a view direction is stored the icon will have the top point in the appropriate direction. Also once the thumbnail is visible you can double click the thumb and the View will rotate to orientate the photo correctly!

Also this is only the first version, hot off the presses, so it not perfect yet, in particular would like to use Geograph specific icons (any Graphic Designers reading???), for example to give more feedback to the user on squares with many images, and view direction – also GE sometimes gets confused at the amount of detail available – plan to experiment to see if something can do about that.

… Hopefully users of GE3 should degrade nicely to use the View-based refresh method of viewing the dataset.

Oh and yes this is the little kml project I mentioned, see also other ways of loading geograph data into Google Earth or Google Maps via KML files.

Posted in Geograph, Google Earth, Google Maps, KML, PHP, SuperLayer | 3 Comments »

KML writing PHP Class

Tuesday, March 6th, 2007

For a little project working on for Geograph (btw Second Birthday today!), that will end up producing quite complex (and repetitive) KML, I decided to take the plunge and create my own abstraction class.

There are already a few of these about, but I wanted something with just enough abstraction so don’t need xml in the php code, but without too much complexity, or a whole new syntax to learn. So the final output is basically a generic XML creation system, but tailored to KML generation, with a number of convenience methods for common bits of KML, (like outputting the right headers). This don’t do any schema enforcement, and assumes a good working knowledge of kml.

Anyway as the code is already GPL, thought would mention it here in case it useful to someone else.

Get the base class here (from the Geograph SVN repository)

There is also another file here, which extends basic the functionality, this is more specific to Geograph, but could still be useful.

And a few demo’s/tests used during development:

Demo1 – (view running demo – by default displays the KML, option to open in GE)
Demo2 – (view running demo)

And for a real world use of the code (been in active use for a week now)

Eagle eyed viewers might notice it claims kml2.0 but then goes on to allow use of 2.1 features. Yes I know this is ‘bad’ but is with reason. I have found to my expense that using 2.1 as the version actually has a few undesirable effects, eg making the Document visible in My Places tree, can’t mix and match styleUrl and style (to have common style but with a unique icon), and a few other subtle things. Whereas GE seems to allow the new features in a 2.0 kml file, I guess this is the GE equivalent to quirks and strict mode. (disclaimer: it’s a while since I tested this, so might be old news, I really should run some real world tests to confirm this is still the case)

Posted in Code, Experimental, Geograph, Google Earth, KML, PHP | 3 Comments »

Geograph Hectads in Google Earth v2

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

Sometime last year I created a visualization of Geograph coverage as a series of 3D columns in Google Earth, well as that is now out of date, time to create updated versions:

: Geograph Points Per Hectad (*)
and Images Submitted Per Hectad (each around 200kb)

These are spectacular in themselves, but if you then create a series of these each timestamped with the dates of the images included, you can get an interactive animation…

So here is a version that downloads a monthly bargraph, since the project began, allowing full animation using the timeslider. Due to the size will only give the Animated Images Version which is the best anyway.

(due to the way of loading the data with nested network links will take time and patience with the timeslider to load them, all it seems to only really be possible by manually dragging the time-slider slowly across the timespan. )

Just need someone to create a fly though preview and upload to YouTube

(* Hectad is a Geograph term for a 10km by 10km square)

Posted in Experimental, Geograph, Google Earth, network-link | 1 Comment »

Another PhotoSpot

Friday, January 26th, 2007

View at Geograph: SH7840 : Stone on Carnedd Iago
Another in the mini-series of Panoramic Images loaded into Google Earth, using DigitalUrban‘s Panoramic Viewer tutorial.

This one is higher resolution than some of the others and ways in at 525kb,
but the extra resolution is useful to see the distant mountain ranges.

Anyway download it here: Google Earth Version

More Links for this location

Posted in Experimental, Geograph, Google Earth, Nearby, PhotoSpot | Comments Off

Network Link updates

Friday, December 15th, 2006

Following on from the last post about the amazing 3D SpaceNavigator (PE) from 3dconnexion, it has finally inspired me to blow the dust off the experimental solution to Making a View-Based Refresh efficient when tilted?, that I blogged about a while ago.

So I’ve just implemented this on the Geograph Google Earth ‘Wide Area’ Network Link, and the Nearby NetworkLayers, (imaginative names aye?), which along with GB and Ireland Grid Lines Layers any my most used network links.

This should have no affect when looking ‘straight down’ but when the globe is tilted, hopefully the useful information should be better positioned in the foreground rather than extending into the blurry distance.

Feedback welcome…

Posted in Experimental, Geograph, Google Earth, Nearby, network-link, SpaceNavigator | Comments Off

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. ]

Posted in Geograph, Google Earth, network-link | Comments Off

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