Archive for the ‘KML’ Category

Howto: Alternative to paging on MyMaps (GoogleMaps)

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

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Update, 2nd August 2008

Suddenly it seems that the KML export from My Maps no longer pages like it used to, so this process is now a lot quicker!

Just use the link ‘View in Google Earth’, and paste it directly in the search box to get access to the geographical culling method. No more going and creating a kml file or any sillyness.

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Introduction

In order to keep the map working at reasonable speed Google Maps needs to limit the available features visible at once, quite simply the more features shown the slower the map gets.

For MyMaps the features are split into pages, so that a reasonable amount of data is shown on one page – effectivly enough that will work at a reasonable speed. This normally results in between 60-200 features at once, but sometimes that is not enough.

However Google Maps uses a different limited method when displaying KML files, a regional geographical culling based method. A certain number of features are shown, to give a reasonable overview, but then as you zoom in more features become visible. This often results in more results being visible, but importantly doesn’t impose the arbitrary pages, so its often more friendly on the user, as can just zoom in on an area rather than flick though pages to find their area.

I’ve moved the meat of this post to a thread on the Google Maps Group – let Google host it!

Howto: Save Directions to a MyMap (GoogleMaps)

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

Google Maps doesn’t include a method to save ‘Driving Directions’ easily into MyMaps. Fortunately they do include KML import/export for most features, so can export the route as KML then reimport it into a My Map.

I’ve moved the meat of this post to a Thread on the Google Maps Group, better for Google to be hosting it :)

GE4.3 Compass Star

Saturday, April 26th, 2008

Compass While playing with the new navigation in Google Earth 4.3, noticed its not always easy to get your bearings (bad pun), also been wanting to play in PSP today, so set to do something about both. The result? A ScreenOverlay showing a compass star on the navigation control.

Google Earth Overlay . GE Compass Star (without numbers)

Note: I do also have a network link that shows the more exact bearing as a placemark label.

(part inspired by)

Updated to add: This has inspired a similar compass that rotates, nice work Gerardo64!

Bah, Spam!

Monday, March 24th, 2008

(appologies all, this post is simply a rant, and unfortunatly will almost certainly not reach the people its intended for!)

I just noticed that despite only having a very soft launch via this blog, already gokml.net* has attacted submission bots, which seems to have the sole purpose of seeking out submission forms and sending in their masters details, I guess in the hope of getting that little bit of search engine juice.

I guess need to roll out a captcha and/or email confirmation, or maybe even akismet.com?

(as a sidenote, I have a really old form that was intended for people to submit sites for a geoindex, in the nearby location search, I dont think its even linked anymore but it still gets hundreds of submissions daily, I’ve kept it open basically as a honey pot, but unsure what to do with the data, suggestions on a postcard…)

(* a ‘tinyurl’ site for creating network-links for KML content – must also get round to finishing it off…)

Where in the world are people looking? part 2

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

Following part 1 yesterday, have now plotted some maps per individual service.

Flash Earth Layer

Conclusions

  1. Google Earth does request a link for the initial view on startup – that point in the Atlantic.
  2. I guess North American installs have two slightly different default placemarks; has it changed, or maybe Canada gets a different one?
  3. But that doesnt explain the lines from there – people must have their links set to periodically refresh?
  4. Germany likes FlashEarth (or rather people like looking at Germany with FlashEarth link enabled)
  5. Many people leave the links open even when not in use – e.g. the British Isles links show worldwide usage, notably over Russia.
  6. MGRS notably has high usage in two areas.
  7. The Far east likes to know what direction they facing.

Update: In a total forehead slapping momont realised these unprojected whole world images, are exactly what is used in GroundOverlays, so the the pages now include links to view the higher resolution images directly in Google Earth, duh!

Example: View In Google Earth (don’t forget to try adjusting the tranparency slider!) [Update, to fix broken link, sorry!]

goKML.net : short (network) links for KML

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

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!goKML.net : short (network) links for KML

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!

(static) Google Maps in Google Earth…

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

Now that Google have just announced a brand spanking new NON JS Maps API, to be able to display maps with a simple img tag, similar to the Chart API. Well I thought it would be fun to re-purpose the
FlashEarth code to create a network link to display Google Maps in a popup balloon on Google Earth. Not totally sure the utility, but sure is fun (until the novelty wears off!)

Open in Google Earth

Hopefully needless to say the map inside the balloon is static and non draggable.

Update to clarify: You get to draw 1,000 maps daily, which is probably plenty, but go over that and the maps will stop working for you.

Update: as alluded to in the official post, you can use the static API to load a quick map, while the rest of the page loads, then at the last minute change it into a dynamic map. A series of demos showing various ways of lazy loading!

Publish your KML via Google

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

Lately I have have been playing a lot with displaying KML files on various properties of Googles, and I thought it was about time I bookmarked the useful pages for my own reference – Firefox has them in the recent list now, but in 2 months time? Anyway in the end thought it would only take bit longer to collate them in a webpage, and make them dynamic links, so without further ado:

Useful links for publishing a KML via Google

ViewFlip for Google Earth

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

Remembering back to the good ol’ pre SpaceNavigator days, when Google Earth was stuck in ‘Earth Based’ mode, and I created ViewFrom, have created a new version that uses the <Camera> functionality to do it more accurately, but at the same wrapping it in a networklink for ease of use…

Google Earth LayerViewFlip (recent GE 4.2+ required)

… open opening this you should get an arrow in the middle of view. Click it and choose to either Flip! (swap position*) or Look Around (which gives you a folder of viewpoints to look out from the point of the arrow). So a sort of basic ‘User Based’ movements, which really (IMHO) should be part of part of the default GE installation – without needed addons.

*There is a few oddities with this – but mostly works. Also you will get a bunch of features in your Temporally Places – GE doesn’t seem to be able to load a KML that just changes the view (which there is no need to show in the Places there are no features)

Update: 25th Jan, Thanks to a suggestion from Frank Taylor the “lookaround” groups are now available at multiple altitudes, nothing new to download, its all done by magic. (let me know if other heights would be useful)

Export all MyMaps to Google Earth

Monday, January 7th, 2008

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Update, 2nd August 2008

Suddenly it seems that the KML export from My Maps no longer pages like it used to, basically making this script redundant – which was always the intention!

So if your file has under 1000 features, then just use the link ‘View in Google Earth’ to get all the data. If you want the
actual data you can change the ‘output=nl’ to ‘output=kml’ to get the KML data rather than a Network Link to it.

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Oh dear, I think I should stay away from the Google Maps Group, following a post (about saving directions to MyMaps) on there a few days ago, realised the KML export is paginated, but there doesnt seem to be a way to get at the following pages directly. It flummoxed me for a while until guessed at the params to get the additional pages, success.

Then a post on there today, made me realise others are coming against this problem, so in traditional hackers** style, here is a little utility to create a multi page network link wrapper…

Export all MyMaps to KML

** follow the link for the definition I mean

Update: 18th Apr, we now download the first page of the map, 1) to get the number of items per page, it seems the link itself is no longer reliable, and 2) it means we can grab the title automatically :)
(note the download is discarded so I dont keep a copy of the data itself)