I'm in the process of creating a KML file to identify all of my important family history locations. For people not familiar with KML, it's Keyhole Markup Language, something akin to HTML or XML but it's used in conjunction with geographic browsers like Google Earth. My plan is to start with only Placemarks but add images later on. Has anyone done this? I'm especially interested in hearing from anyone who has shared their KML file(s) publicly as I plan to do. A URL for such a file would be great. I'd love to take a look at what others have already done along these lines. Thanks, Mardon

In article <Xns9A43B2D0161AEmgb72mgbhotmailcom@194.177.96.78>, Mardon <mgb72mgb@hotmail.com> wrote: >I'm in the process of creating a KML file to identify all of my important >family history locations. For people not familiar with KML, it's Keyhole >Markup Language, something akin to HTML or XML but it's used in conjunction >with geographic browsers like Google Earth. > >My plan is to start with only Placemarks but add images later on. Has >anyone done this? I'm especially interested in hearing from anyone who has >shared their KML file(s) publicly as I plan to do. A URL for such a file >would be great. I'd love to take a look at what others have already done >along these lines. I haven't shared them yet, but have set up some placemarks and a couple of images. Still debating some software issues (as in how much will I write myself) because I'd as soon have this sort of KML generation sorted out by the geneaology software. The drawback (imho) with a Google Earth presentation is that it uses the worst possible projection -- satellite view. In order to see my North American relatives (only, and we're mostly, it seems, a bunch of central and eastern I-80 folks) I have to pull the image viewpoint back to at least 1200 km. I do earth remote sensing with a satellite, and it's only 700 km up. When you're back far enough to see the group, you're much too far back to see any details (at least state names, perhaps national names are gone too). I haven't experimented much with it. Perhaps someone knows how to make Google Earth use a more reasonable projection, like Lambert Conformal. -- Robert Grumbine http://www.radix.net/~bobg/ Science faqs and amateur activities notes and links. Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences

Well, I haven't been doing it for my own family history, but we publish KMZ files (the compressed form of KML) to show the locations of cemeteries we've photographed. This is a small cemetery at Fassifern near Boonah, Queensland. http://www.chapelhill.homeip.net/FamilyHistory/Photos/Fassifern-Boonah/GoogleEarth.kmz In our case we don't embed photos into the KML itself (because we have many photos for each cemetery) but simply provide a bit of text commentary and a URL to the photos themselves. Kerry

"Kerry Raymond" <kraymond@iprimus.com.au> wrote: > Well, I haven't been doing it for my own family history, but we > publish KMZ files (the compressed form of KML) to show the locations > of cemeteries we've photographed. This is a small cemetery at > Fassifern near Boonah, Queensland. > > http://www.chapelhill.homeip.net/FamilyHistory/Photos/Fassifern-Boonah/ > GoogleEarth.kmz > > In our case we don't embed photos into the KML itself (because we have > many photos for each cemetery) but simply provide a bit of text > commentary and a URL to the photos themselves. > > Kerry This is a really neat way of doing it too. I had't thought about creating a unique KMZ file for each location. This would allow me to link location references within my html files to the KMZ file for that location. A user click on the link would show the spot on Google Earth (providing of course the user has associated the file extension KMZ/KML with Google Earth or another geographic browser.) Thanks, Kerry.

My attempts at representing information from an 18th century estate map on modern satellite images from Google Earth is shown at http://www.donne.me.uk/crowan/godolphinmanor.htm. The area represented is in the parish of Crowan in Cornwall, UK. Regards: Roger Donne "Mardon" <mgb72mgb@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:Xns9A43B2D0161AEmgb72mgbhotmailcom@194.177.96.78... > I'm in the process of creating a KML file to identify all of my important > family history locations. For people not familiar with KML, it's Keyhole > Markup Language, something akin to HTML or XML but it's used in > conjunction > with geographic browsers like Google Earth. > > My plan is to start with only Placemarks but add images later on. Has > anyone done this? I'm especially interested in hearing from anyone who > has > shared their KML file(s) publicly as I plan to do. A URL for such a file > would be great. I'd love to take a look at what others have already done > along these lines. > > Thanks, Mardon

"Roger Donne" <roger@donne.free-online.co.uk> wrote: > My attempts at representing information from an 18th century estate > map on modern satellite images from Google Earth is shown at > http://www.donne.me.uk/crowan/godolphinmanor.htm. The area represented > is in the parish of Crowan in Cornwall, UK. > > Regards: Roger Donne Thanks for your example, Roger. Static jpeg images, customized with overlays, is pretty much the way that I've been going up to now also. It works well but I've become interested in moving beyond that and using KML to integrate my data with a geographic browser like Google Earth. I think that doing so will help provide people with a better sense of location and scale. Being able to zoom in and out and 'fly around' the area of interest seems to give a better feel for the geography.