Archive for the ‘maps’ Category

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)

The British Isles is burning!

Sunday, November 4th, 2007

It has to be said that when we started the Geograph British Isles project we certainly didn’t think it would grow quite a quickly as it has, nor that we could get such a submission rate, particulaly in adding depth – adding photos to a square once it was turned red on the map. Well to this end we recently introduced depth maps which colour the map based on the number of photos in the square. A preview is available here, but click the image for the normal Geograph map viewer in this new mode. Just goes to show how well photographed some areas are, but also a lot of the country only has the first geograph in the square, so much more depth to go!

Update: View as a time-based animation.
(includes raw frames as would like someone to make a better presentantion of this!)

btw, as I am colour-blind and unable to come up with the colour scheme, can only thank who ever created the colour scheme for CIS. (A very interesting package – worth playing with just for the data it has – I can provide a file to load geograph depth into it if interest!)

(yes the title is a tribute to this)

Building the UK one block at a time!

Monday, August 20th, 2007

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?