Got an email a few weeks ago from someone who wanted to post data taken with a GPS, in GPX file format, and display it as an embeddable map on his blog; he couldn’t find anything on that on the web. I offered one possibility, and he in turn suggested that I might put up a brief post on the topic. Here’s a few ways to do it, off the top of my head.
Some of these will require you to convert your GPX data into an alternate format, like KML or shapefile. A search of this website will bring up lots of programs that can do these conversions, but probably the simplest way is to load your GPX file into Google Earth, then export the data in KML or KMZ format. Note: All of these sites require you to create a free account.
Google Maps My Maps – The alternative I suggested; not a lot of features, but very easy to use. Import KML/KMZ files from your computer or a web link, use the built-in editor to add additional features. You can then display the map on your website using a widget.
Google Docs Spreadsheet – If you convert your GPX files to CSV files using a program like DNRGarmin or GPXToPOI, you can import the data into a Google Docs spreadsheet; Google offers a tutorial on converting that data into a KML network link for display in Google Maps or the Google Earth plugin.
GeoCommons – Just posted about this yesterday; upload your data and display it in widget format. All data you upload will be available for anyone to use or download.
MapChannels – Lots of map creation features, and embeddable maps.
ScribbleMaps Pro – Similar to Google Maps My Maps, but offers lots more import options and drawing tools. Highly recommended.
Feel free to add your own recommendations in the comments section.
Wikiloc (www.wikiloc.com) offers an HTML embed code for each GPS track you upload.
It supports GPX, PLT, KML, KMZ and many more formats.
The http://www.Fotomobil.at » wordpress openstreetmap plugin (http://www.faktor.cc/Fotomobil/wp-osm-plugin) does this quite well for WordPress-based blogs. Don’t know about general embedding of OSM, tho’.
With gpsies.com it is also possible to embed track on your own site. A nice one for usa is http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.html .
I use the “Inline Google Maps” plugin for my WordPress blog, I convert the gpx into a KMZ and ad it to a Google map, for example: http://askatasuna.be/?p=1115
Maybe this is a little offtopic, but I have a question regarding the management and searching of an archive of many years of recorded tracklogs and waypoint files. Most of my files are in gpx, loc, kml, kmz, gps (gps utility) format. (I could batch convert them to a common format)
I was wondering if anyone knows of a software tool or a method to search from a complete folder or list of data files to find which files contain waypoints, trackpoints or routes that are near a supplied coordinate. say for example, from point A at x latitude and y longitude, search within a 10 km radius and tell me which files have waypoints or trackpoints in that area.
Don’t know of anything like that. If you combine all the points into a single database, it should be possible to do a query for points within a certain distance of a specified coordinate.
I have a customer that the location of the ads change at least 4 times during the month. I am using GEO targeted map to draw the area of the counties and zip codes I wish to advertise on. Befoe I do that I import the information from an excel spread sheet into a mappoint progam and then I compare the two and draw in or out pending on budget. The problem is this becomes very labor intensive. What I would like a to bridge between mappoint and the google geo and download the shapes without drawing them myself. Map point can extract the info to a GPX file.
I’m sorry, but it’s not clear from your comment what you are doing, or what you want to do.
It is too bad I can’t upload screen shots, but I’ll try to explain better. On the program called mappoint I have several shaded areas that signify scattered counties and zip codes throughout the US (such as king county in Washington or Ada county in Idaho). Those shaded areas on mappoint tell me which Geographical areas I have to advertise on Google adwords. Since the adwords application doesn’t read counties, I have to draw vectore points on the google adwords map and then put them together to create a shaded area to signify the county thereby creating the same shaded areas I have on mappoint. The ideal situation for me would be if I could transfer the shaded area on mappoint directly into the google adwords application, so I don’t have to draw the area myself.
Not having any experience with either the AdSense or MapPoint applications, I don’t have an answer for you. If the AdSense application supports import of geographic areas in standard formats (GPX, KML, shapefile), and MapPoint supports export in those formats (or you can find a converter that will create a standard format from MapPoint data), then there should be a way around that. If you’re using standard government/political land divisions like counties or census tracts, a search on the Web should pull up free government data in standard format for those divisions.