I posted a while back about Johnny Lee’s plans and software for converting a Wii Remote into a hand/motion tracker for various uses; seemed like a good match for some mapping applications. Touchless is another motion tracking system, this one using a webcam to track user-specified objects in the webcam view to modify objects on-screen.
Played with the software demo shown in the video above a bit (which includes manipulating a map image on-screen), and while it’s not perfect, it is kind of fun. It’s open source, and there’s an SDK available if you want to experiment with adding it to your own applications.
Don’t have access to Access (ha ha), but stumbled across this and thought some might find it useful: a VBA macro for Microsoft Access that exports a table/query with latitude and longitude to Google Earth’s KML format. The original code has disappeared, but a page that offers explanations and augmentations to the original code can be found here.
Also tucked away in my bookmarks was this link to a Google Earth community post offering an XSL-based tool for exporting from Access to KML. The link to the downloadable file seems to be missing, but I snagged it at the time, and you can download it from this link.
As I said, haven’t tried any of these – use at your own risk/discretion.
Know where a building is, but don’t know the street address? This Digital Inspiration page lets you click on a location in Google Maps, and brings up the nearest street address (“reverse geocoding”):
This is one of the neater online mapping applications I’ve seen in a while. Create a list of addresses and related information in a Google Docs spreadsheet, and map a list will geocode the addresses (convert the address to latitude/longitude), and plot the location and data in a Google Maps interface:
You can also export the data as a KML file for use in Google Earth.
User-selectable icons
Also plots latitude/longitude locations
Includes data in other spreadsheet columns in the data bubble
Lets you embed images and hyperlinks as well
Data can be public or private
As you update the spreadsheet, the map data is updated as well (daily, or on demand)
Not a lot of documentation, but it’s fairly easy to use, and a healthy number of example spreadsheets will show you how it’s done (scroll through the list at the bottom, and click on the link to see the sample spreadsheet for each list item)
Completely free (though they’ll take donations, and offer premium consulting services for a fee)
ogr2ogr is a simple command line utility that converts between supported vector file formats. For those who don’t like dealing with command line programs, and need only limited conversion capability, Inventis has written a simple Windows front-end for ogr2ogr called ogr2gui:
Documentation is limited, so it’s not clear which input formats are fully supported. For example, input shapefiles work, but I had problems getting E00 files to convert (see this post for an E00 to shapefile conversion process that does work). Hopefully documentation will improve with time along with functionality (this is already the fourth release).
Output formats are limited to:
Shapefile
MapInfo
KML
GML
CSV
Converting shapefiles to Google Earth’s KML format works as long as the shapefile is in latitude/longitude format, WGS84; attribute table data added to the placemark pop-up for point shapefiles, but not lines or areas. There are better converters for shapefiles to KML conversion like shp2kml, but this is a good choice for converting other less-well-supported vector formats into the supported output formats..
Got coordinates in degree-minute-second degrees, and need them in decimal format fast? Or the reverse? Go to Google Maps, enter the coordinates into the search box. e.g. +34 59′ 59.00″, -109 59′ 59.00″, and get a map with a pop-up containing the converted coordinates:
You can then copy and paste the pop-up text into another application. It does have one minor bug – type in an even latitude/longitude, like 3,-110, and you’ll get this:
Obviously, instead of 59 minutes and 60 seconds, the degree numbers should be one higher. Not a situation you’ll see often, though …
If you do this on a regular basis, you might take a look at some earlier posts on this blog that talk about stand-alone options:
I’ve covered ColorBrewer, an application for assessing color schemes for maps, in a previous post. In the same spirit comes TypeBrewer, an online application that “offers a quick and easy way to explore typographic alternatives and see the impact that various elements of type have on the overall look and feel of a map”. It doesn’t actually design a map, but rather shows you how different fonts and styles appear on a sample map. Select a set of sample font types from the initial choices:
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