Archive for the ‘Nearby’ Category

Google Earth Version Stats

Saturday, September 16th, 2006

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]

GE 4 does UTM

Thursday, September 14th, 2006

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!

KML Grouper by State, Country, Continent…

Thursday, September 14th, 2006

Meant to be starting work, so will just duplicate my GEC post for the moment:

Well it looks like it works, so pleased to give you this think:

http://www.nearby.org.uk/group-kml.php

“… Takes a kml file full of placemarks, and organizes them into a folder tree structure, starting by continent and working down though country to state/county if possible…”

feedback is welcome,

In particular thinking of introducing a few more levels of customisation of the grouping, eg only by country, or skip continent etc, but see how it goes…

Huge thanks to geonames.org for the webservices that power this, and to pmaxfield2 for the idea!

P.S. Not every country has state/county breakdown, notably the UK, this is something that geonames is working to rectify, but even the US gov couldn’t get the data!

GB+Ireland Gridlines for (Mapping) Garmin GPSr’s

Sunday, July 16th, 2006

I recently got a new shiny Garmin Handheld GPS receiver (GPSmap 76C), and I’m really impressed with the mapping. However I’ve been brought up on OS maps and find Grid References easier to use than lat/long, so the National Grid comes naturally, unfortunately such units don’t feature grid-lines. But not any more, download Grid-lines for a Garmin device here. I include plain text files in case others can convert the mp files to something for use on other devices for example!

(could be said to be following in the footsteps of a very similar feature for Google Earth ;) , with interest could even create a UTM version – but would be much bigger files due to the greater coverage )

…updates, updates, updates …

Thursday, July 6th, 2006

After a comparatively quiet period, have finally begun some development work again on these sites, so far: The Nearby API now has a SOAP interface. And two new features for Google Earth: IARU Locator Echo and Worldwide MGRS Grid-lines Layer.
Oh and deformedweb.co.uk is now hosted on the same dedicated server as this site, should mean can do more there….

Getmapping images for Great Britain

Thursday, May 25th, 2006

local.live.com has released detailed aerial photography for Great Britain, in the form of data from getmapping.com, great!

I’ve heard rumours that Microsoft are allowing certain imagry to be used in Worldwind, wonder if that is worth checking out…

(edit: seems I was quite slow on picking this up! Interestingly also adds ‘birds eye views‘)

New Servers for nearby.org.uk, Yay!

Wednesday, May 24th, 2006

Just a quick message to say thanks for everyone’s patience over the past few days, as have been migrating stuff over to new servers. Didn’t have as much time as hoped so few things have remained broken for longer than they should. Anyway the updates should mean a vast improvement in performance, not to mention now hosting in Europe, rather than in the US.

Ireland support

Monday, May 1st, 2006

It seems there was few issues with Northern Ireland Postcodes, the Coordinate converter and API should both handle them properly. As well as adding support to the Maps section.

Downloads from nearby

Sunday, April 2nd, 2006

Slightly fearing for my bandwidth ;) I have put up a page listing a few of the downloads available from nearby.org.uk. The list is likly to grow as I tidy up more of the data held around this site….

Google Dables RSS feeds…

Sunday, April 2nd, 2006

I don’t know how many, if any, keep an eye on the Google Dables page, but you can now you can now subscribe to the RSS feed! It is also available in a number of other formats, see the Google Dables page for more info.