geotagging Archives - Sky's Blog

Google Earth as a visual-access tool

sky — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:40:14 +0000

Google Earth can be viewed as a “browser” for people who are visually and spatially oriented. It lets them access information from around the world, using the planet itself as their visual/spatial reference point. For our new Project Happiness, we are anticipating we’ll receive posted video, audio, photos and other artistic contributions from schools and students around the world, and Google Earth will be one of the “portals” that people can use to sort out this information.

To find examples of Google Earth being used by nonprofits, check the Google Earth outreach web site. There are many, many specific example on the outreach showcase page.

Google Earth is built on a technology developed by Keyhole Technologies – and thus the file format that’s used – KML – stands for Keyhold Markup Language. KML files contain the stuff that describes each geo-linked event or information.

To create a new “layer” (contining your own locations) to Google Earth, you can make your own forum (on your own server) using UBB.threads (Ultimate Bulletin Board $229 per year or $499 for 5 years) software. (This may or may not work any more – I haven’t tried it.) You could also create and edit your KML file by hand, or using an XML-editing tool.

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The Quantified Self – More Geo-Tripping

sky — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:11:14 +0000

The ways I choose to get regular exercise are hiking and biking. I never could stand “going to the gym” and doing an indoor workout. It always seemed to me that there was little point in getting in the car, driving somewhere, parking, going inside to exercise on machines, getting all sweaty, then back in the car, and driving home again. And running was always hard on my feet and knees, so although I did run for a few years (up and down San Francisco hills), it didn’t really last.

I find that hiking 10+ miles with a 20-lb pack gives me an opportunity to clear my mind for 3 hours, see some of the city (or the surrounding territory), work off a thousand or so calories, take a few interesting photos, and see people doing a lot of silly things.

Read more about that iPhone app EveryTrail…

This iPhone app EveryTrail goofed me up last weekend when I hiked the Headlands in Marin County and it completely lost all of my data – after 10 miles of recording. So today I did another urban hike, down to the Ferry Building, around the Embarcadero to near Pier 39, then back down Van Ness Avenue and up Market Street to my starting point. This time its recording was quite good! There were a few of the usual GPS glitches (it’s hard for the GPS to see enough satellites in an urban setting with hills and skyscrapers around), but by and large it recorded my track pretty well.

I’m comparing the distances against the Nike Plus Sportband, and the EveryTrail app always reads about 10% higher than the Sportband, so I’m not sure which one to believe yet. I think that probably half of the difference is due to GPS inaccuracies, so I’d say that the Sportband (for me) records about 5% lower than my actual mileage, and EveryTrail probably records 5% higher than actual.

The EveryTrail widget (see below) is giving me a little trouble, but try clicking “Full” and then double-click to zoom in on San Francisco and you’ll see how it recorded my route. There’s gotta be a way to get the widget to zoom in automatically, but I haven’t figured it out yet, sorry.

(If you have Google Earth on your computer, you can download this KML file and see my trip in Google Earth – I absolutely love this!)

SF loop

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging

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A big “thank you” to my international readers

sky — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 03:08:21 +0000

I don’t have a huge readership (although I’m happy with what I’m getting), but if you look at my ClustrMap you’ll see that this blog is broadly read around the world. And so this is just a short post to say “thank you” to those outside of the US and Europe who are my readers. (ClustrMaps provides a little map showing where our readers are (based on the IP addresses of their ISPs), and it’s a pretty neat service.)

I’ve been tracking readership this way for about a year now, and it’s really gratifying to see that international readership has broadened out. It used to be primarily the US, with a little bit in Europe and some in India. Now we’ve spread to South America and more broadly in Asia.

Thank you to everyone.

Now, I’d better get busy and write more blog entries…

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