nearby.org.uk blog

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)

A while ago I compiled statistics of the versions of Google Earth in use in the wild (well technically accessing network links at nearby.org.uk) - well an updated version is now available.

For comparison here is the version from last Sept.

Conclusion: GE3 is definitely on the way out, but still actively used. A large number of people haven’t updated their GE4 for a while, and there might be a new version coming out sometime soon.

Update: It turns out my simplistic test for useragents beginning with kh_ missed off Mac and Linux clients - so here is a another updated version that does include such clients. Thanks to a commenter on Gearthblog for spotting this!
(I could rerun the above reports but see little point)

Update 2: It seems the new version was incorrectly calculating the total for Mac/Linux users - updated the link in the update above to correct this.

Following the addition of GeoRSS, earlier today while out photographing some PhotoSpots (TBA), I had an even better (possibly) idea, now that my WordPress stores Lat/Long, why not output KML too! The icing on the cake is you can also wrap it in a NetworkLink so that peoples Google Earth will auto update. (I am surprised couldn’t find this done already!)

And if that isn’t enough then I also release the code under GPL - note its the first time written anything for Wordpress, so might not be a tidy as could be!

Anyway see it in action on my series of PhotoSpots:

• As a Auto Updating Network Link
• or direct Google Earth KML file

• or even on Google Maps! (will also auto update!)

- as all these list the PhotoSpot category, each post includes a link to open the actual spot, so just click the world icon in the balloon to open

Download the Source or view the source: WordPress KML Generator and NetworkLink Wrapper

Installation: This is not a proper plugin, so just drop the .php files into the root of your WordPress folder and you should be done (but you can configure the icon to display if you wish by editing the wp-kml.php file)

Use: Normally you would only provide a link to the Wrapper - which in turn links to the feed itself, but the feed is useful like in the above example to plot directly on Google Maps. You can also specify a particular category to display like the above example or otherwise will include all geocoded posts.
Important: Requires the GeoPress extension be installed (to get geocode info)
Only tested on WordPress 2.0.1 - Works For Me - Your Mileage May Vary - no guarantee, implied or otherwise

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)

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…

I really should at least mention the hard work Frank Taylor from gearthblog.com has put into getting Blue Marble Imagry to overlay on your Google Earth Globe. The results are amazing, it seems a definite improvement over the patchwork mosaic you see when viewing large areas, and as a bonus you get realtimeish (3hours) global clouds.

Anyway read more over at GEarthBlog, here.
Or just download directly here .

(it exploits the new Region Functionality in the GE v4 (Beta), however a bug prevents this from working nicely in all but the very latest version, so such users fall over gracefully to a version that works by intereacting with a webserver. )

I guess this only is really of interest to Google Earth network link builders… And rather that rewrite again what I wrote on the GEC, will quote the juicy bit and then provide a link (laziness!)

 ” As is probably common I use the BBOX returned during a refresh of a View-Based refresh to return some results to the user.

This works well when the view is directly overhead as there is very little wastage and the bbox represents the region of interest quite well.

However as soon as the view is tilted it becomes less useful as lots of the bbox is wasted in encompassing the distant area toward the horizon. “

I then go on to discuss my potential solution, add a demo and a link to the source, hopeing that somebody else is working or at least thinking of something similar…

View post here

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]

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. ]

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!