Designing layout in pop up balloons

This is the last idea from the Google Teacher's institute I'm going to blog about and it comes from Ben.

When you click a point in Google Earth you'll often get a pop-up appear.  Formatting in balloons is often important, e.g. in this nice example of 'old photo compared to new photo' you need to have the photos the right size, captions and a link to the source is important.   Problem is you can't do this sort of formatting easily within Google Earth unless you're an expert in HTML.

The point shown in the screen shot was created using the technique I'm about to explain including uploading the photos to blogger.

HowTo
1] Sign up to Blogger.com.  It's OK if you have no intention of using a blog, you don't have to publish anything.

2] Create a new post.  By default a button top left will be 'Compose' rather than 'HTML' .  That's good.  Use the tools provided to upload photos and arrange your text how you want it.

3] Now click the 'HTML' button mentioned already.  You'll see a load of weird text, this is the HTML that actually made the page you were working on.  Copy it all.

4] Go over to Google Earth, create a placemark (yellow pin button top left).  A 'new placemark' dialog box will appear.

5] Paste your HTML into the description box and click OK.

6] Now clicking your placemark (Places column on the left or in the main screen) will pop up your nicely formatted balloon.

7] when you're happy, go back and turn off your blogger post, no need to publish your post for your pop-ups to work (although you might want to save it/them and reuse the structure another time)

Extra stuff:
Pop-ups for areas and Lines: While a placemark works in my example (two photos work well as a point), you may want a balloon associated with an area, e.g. a large building or a line, e.g. a railway.  You can create a pop-up for these too, just create as you did with the placemark and put your HTML in the description box as before.  Clicking the line or area will produce a pop-up in exactly the same way.

Another Advantage: The technique has the advantage that you can use blogger to host your photos, you can put photos for pop ups in the KMZ file Google Earth creates but its buggy in the current version (see earlier post) so this technique not only makes it easy to format a photo pop-up, it solves that problem too.

Disadvantage: you need to be online to write a blogger post and for someone to view any photos in the pop-ups you create, they'll also have to be online.

Explaining Map Projections with GMEL (Google Maps Engine Lite)

This is the second post in which I write up ideas I've lifted from colleagues at the Google Teacher's Institute I went to in Pittsburg earlier this year.  This time I'll work up an idea I got from Josh Williams, author of geteach.com:  Use the polygon (shape) function in google maps engine lite to illustrate distortions produced by projections.

Background to Projections:  A problem with all flat maps is the 'orange peel problem' - try as you might there is no way to peel an orange and get the peel to lay flat without stretching it (if it was made of rubber) or ripping it into very small pieces.  All flat map representations of our globe are therefore distorted in some way.

HowTo:
0] You may like to start with some demo of actually peeling an orange and trying to get the peel flat.

1] Using Google Earth show students Greenland and South America to illustrate the size difference.  You might like to use the ruler tool to actually measure the width/height.  South America is much the larger.

2] Now flip to Google Maps Engine Lite and create a new map by clicking the button (you'll need to login to Google if you aren't already)

3] Name the map 'Illustrating Projections' or something similar

4] Point out to the students the difference in apparent size now, why would Greenland appear to be the same size as the much bigger South America?  The answer is distortion.

5] Using the 'draw a line tool' (a line separated by circles in a button under the search bar) click and release four times to create a big square covering Brazil.  It will have circles at the corners to show it is the item you are editing at the moment.

6] Tell the students you're now going to drag it northwards over Greenland and that the surface area it encloses is going to stay constant.  Get them to predict what is going to happen to the square in a sketch on paper.

7]  Now click the square so it has circles (being edited) and drag it northwards.  The distortion shows up in three ways:
a] it gets bigger
b] it gets wider at the top at the bottom as the distortion increases closer to the poles
c] edges become curves, again, due to the distortion increasing as you go north.

8] Process with students, e.g. I'd ask if anyone got all three.

Image in balloon pop-up work around

I had multiple students have issues with images in pop-ups not appearing in an assignment this summer.  If you've noticed the same issue on v7 then I have a work around:  upload the image to dropbox and give your image a web link.  Weirdly you can't use Google Drive for this (AFAIK).  As a work around it has the disadvantage that images will load up more slowly than if they were in the KMZ but at least it works.  Here's the specific steps that you can give students:


1] In the Layers column of the bottom left of the Google Earth screen, untick everything (except terrain if you can see it). Delete any features from the last tutorial in the Places column.

2] The image to the left is a photo at this URL https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/504587/A2S/Portree_on_Skye.jpg Save it somewhere sensible. right click the photo > save as

3] Set up a dropbox Account if you haven’t got one, http://www.dropbox.com/login 

4] Access your Dropbox file store via the web https://www.dropbox.com/home/ enter the ‘public’ folder in the list. Anything put in here is available on the web. Now click the upload icon . Its at the top of the screen. Choose the Portree photo and upload it.

5] You have now uploaded the photo to the public folder on your Dropbox website and it has a URL. To get the URL: right click the photo > copy public link > Enter it into a new browser tab to see that it works.

6] Now we will access it in Google Earth. Click ‘temporary places’ folder to make it active. Create a placemark anywhere and in the dialog box :
- Name it ‘Anywhere photo’ > Click ‘Add image’ > paste the photo URL > click OK
- Back in Google Earth click the placemark you have created. You should see a pop up balloon appear with your photo in it.

Google Earth Tour Builder HowTo

Following my recent review of Google Earth Tour Builder I showcased it at the AGU conference before Christmas.  Google have published some text instructions but I thought a video tutorial would be worthwhile.


Richard Byrne also has a video tutorial, he discusses using multiple photos/videos for each place (functionality which I'm a bit 'meh' about) but doesn't go into the detail about tilted or plan locations.

'Back to School: Google Earth for Teachers

screen shot of new content in GEFT

Back in May I released an 'open course' devoted to helping Geography school teachers use Google Earth as a GIS in their teaching: Google Earth for Teachers (GEFT).  The 'core' content was 6 up to date videos.  Following feedback from teachers using it over the summer I've made some changes:

• It now has its own domain 'GEforTeachers.com' (update 5th Nov 2013: which redirects you to a Moodle site)
• You no longer have to register to access, just choose 'guest' middle of the way down on the left at the entry page.
• I've added an 'Advanced' section with tools and tutorials for those who are beyond introductory level.

I'd love to hear what you think of it!

Google Maps Engine Lite as a tool for Education

Where I've been:  I'm now a proud Dad so I've been busy of late.  A friend asked if I'd produced a map of where my son was born, sort of Angela Jolie tattoo style.  The answer is no, to quote Steven, 'not all data should be mapped' :)

Simple Mapping (applying palettes to points):  One of the things I learnt at the recent Cloud Mapping event I helped run was that Google have been working on tools to make creating simple maps from spreadsheets.  As an example of web based, simple GIS I run a practical for undergrad students which uses Google fusion tables to apply palette files to data.  I'm planning to rewrite it to use the more elegant Google Maps Engine Lite (GMEL).  You can get an idea what GMEL is about from this video:



It is from Google's recent MOOC Mapping with Google, (course materials are still available).  I think a number of people used the MOOC just to learn about this tool.

GMEL is definitely a tool worth a look for teaching simple map making and simple GIS.  I'll post more thoughts here when I've had a proper go with it.

Folder Based Tours (workaround v7 record tours problem)

In v7 of Google Earth there currently is an issue with recording tours.  When opening balloons while recording a tour they subsequently fail to open or come up blank.  The steps below solved the problem for me:

Folder based tours HowTo:  

1] Create placemarks with appropriate views.  If you want a photo or text to show up, put it in the description box (note you can put videos in also but this technique won't get them to auto play on opening)

2] Create a folder

     right click temporary places folder > add > folder

drag all your placemarks into the folder and arrange in the order you want them to play.

3] Open
     PC:  File menu > Options (I think) > touring > When creating a tour from a folder (box) > select 'Show balloon when waiting at features' tick box.

      Mac:  Google Earth menu > Preferences > touring > When creating a tour from a folder (box) > select 'Show balloon when waiting at features' tick box.

4] While you have the dialog box open adjust 'Time between features', 'Wait at features' to figures that work for your tour.

5] Find the folder 'play tour' button.  Its a folder icon with a arrow in it far bottom right of the Places column.  Click it and your tour will play.

6] You can adjust the sequence of placemarks and the speed with which the tour flies at and how long it pauses for using steps [3] and [4].

Create Video of Google Earth Tour

Update 19:20 BST:  I originally referred to a person here who didn't wish to be name checked so I've removed his name.

The way to do this is to use a screen recorder, I got my students to do this for an assignment recently so I thought I'd share the instructions they got on how to do this with screencast-o-matic (Jing is another free alternative but I haven't got it to work).

Tip:  Get on the machine with the best graphics card you have, effectively the computer needs to process output from Google Earth AND record the screen at the same time.

8] Note:  Screencast-o-matic works on Uni machines but may not work on other machines depending on browser and java plugins.  

Goto http://screencast-o-matic.com/ 

8.1] Click ‘Start Recording’ and a dotted box will appear.  For screen:

Click the size dropdown (blue arrows) > ‘small HD’.  

This is a good size for practising but you want to choose ‘Full HD’ for any true recordings as this is the largest resolution for YouTube. 

8.2] Drag the dotted box over your prezi presentation (don’t worry it isn’t big enough).  

Arrage the dotted box so its above the arrow controls in Prezi.  You don’t want to record you clicking the arrows in the presentation.

8.3]  Start the recording by clicking the red button.  Click through the prezi view points using the arrows.  

When you are finished click DONE.  Your recording should play on screen.  From here we could publish to YouTube but we shouldn’t do at the moment as we don’t have rights to the images or video we’ve used.  To find out how to find images and videos you can use see http://creativecommons.org/about and search via http://search.creativecommons.org/


UPDATE, 17.45 BST:  I'm reminded that you need to be careful to stay within Google's terms and conditions.  See http://www.google.com/permissions/geoguidelines.html#maps-video

Google maps canned Streetview

One neat trick with streetview is that you can find a view you like and record it as a URL. This can then be entered into a point pop up.  See two points on part of the walk I did last weekend as an example, it worked nicely on a smart phone too.


View Walk example in a larger map

Teaching applications:
- Field Trip: Define points to be visited on a field trip or way points (eg at this sign by the road, turn left).  These can be visited virtually pre and/or post field trip AND used during the field trip using a smart phone* (see walk example above for how this could work)
- Before and after:  link to current photos of a landscape that has changed (the 'after') and the streetview that acts as the 'before' shot.  Here's an example: people took pictures during the flooding of New York by hurricane Sandy which are compared to the streetview shots.
- Different Landscapes: mark views of different landscapes such as mountains (example around Snowdon), farmland and woodland.  Discuss with students how these are modified by man.

HowTo

1. Open Google Maps (you need to be logged into a Google Account: How to create one) and click 'My Places (top leftish) > create a map (red button).
2. Create a placemark on this new map by clicking paddle icon (top left) and then clicking on screen somewhere on a UK road you want to capture a streetview view.
3. Open a new browser tab with google maps in (maps.google.com) 
4. In this new window, drag and drop orange man by Navigation controls (top left) to the location of your placemark .  You will enter streetview.
5. Navigate around in streetview until you are happy with the view. Click the chain icon ( top left/centre) to create a URL, click 'short URL'.  Copy the string created.
6. Now return to your first map and in the pop up window type 'street view at this location' or some more logical text. Click 'rich text editor' and block your typed text. Click on the link icon and paste your URL in. Click ok.
7. Repeat steps 2 to 6 for as many placemarks as you want.  Add lines or areas too if needs be.
8. Select privacy settings as needed, public means anyone can search for and find your map.  Unlisted means only those with the link can find it but obviously, its not properly private.
9. When you're done save your map then click 'Done'.  You will go to the home page of the map you've just created.  Click the link button top left, this now links to your new map rather than the view. 
10. Share the URL with anyone you want to see the map.

*this assumes a decent 3G signal or preloading of data

Simple Mapping tools: Google Earth, Gemma and Digimap

I'm giving a lecture on Thursday to first year geographers on tools for simple mapping suitable for geography assignments.  My choices?

• Google Earth (well, obviously)
• Gemma (my review on my other blog)
• Digimap

If you step through this prezi presentation to the end you can see:

• My bullet points for the lecture
• To the right of the bullet points for each one I've added some commentary that you have to zoom into to read
• below the bullet points is a YouTube video walkthrough (links Gemma, Digimap) for each one except Google Earth which has a link to an earlier tutorial of mine.  Note that the digimap one assumes you're a Southampton Uni student so can sign into the service.

Prezi maps: You might also like to follow the prezi through, I link to some of my favourite maps and there's commentary on most of them (in the form of the same small scale writing to the right) too.  

Maps and Mapping at University on Prezi

Eye-Tracking Zoomable Maps

This post was joint authored by Paolo Battino and Rich Treves.

One of the evaluation techniques we said we would employ in our Google Research Project (links to search query) is eye-tracking.  Eye-tracking software is usually designed to record the position of your gaze on the screen, assuming the content of the screen only changes in a predictable manner. This means that current eye-tracking software is good for understanding actions on a web page e.g. did the user spend more time looking at side menu, header or main content?  This is because the screen is divided into static areas and the time spent looking at each area can be easily calculated.

Problem with Eye-Tracking: Unfortunately, this does not work with a map (or a virtual globe) and you want to keep track of the geographic location observed by the user.  In this situation, XY coordinates on screen recorded by the eye-tracker do not directly map onto Lat Long coordinates because the user can zoom, pan and tilt the map ‘camera’. 

Solution:  We have developed a solution entirely based on software developed for this project.  See example below:  

    

Heat maps showing density of eye fixations on a Google Earth map.  

Reading down, the screen shots represent zooming in.  

Red = High density, Blue = Low

Subjects were tested in a mock up of an educational situation.  They were shown (in a Google Earth tour) how to identify a special type of valley and then asked to find one in a given area.  The heat-maps show where on the surface of Google Earth the user was looking at during the experiment independent of zoom level/tilt/pan position. 

Heat Map Script: The heat-map script, developed by Patrick Wied, is particularly efficient in showing “the big picture” (top) but also shows dynamic rendering when the user zooms in.  The screen shots themselves are from a Google Map mashup with all the usual zoom and pan controls.

HowTo:  The solution we describe here only works with Google Earth as it requires the Google Earth API.  

Summary of the Process:

1)   During the experiment, the eye-tracker records each fixation in terms of X,Y tuple together with a very accurate timestamp (this is important).

2)   During the experiment, a custom script records the position of the Google Earth ‘camera’ which is producing the view  on screen.  It polls the Google Earth API every 200 milliseconds or so and every entry is timestamped.

3)   After the experiment, on a webpage using the Google Earth API we reproduce exactly the same view displayed during the exercise by feeding Google Earth the logs from  [2].

4)   Using the timestamp of each log entry, we look up the eye-tracking logs to find out if there was a fixation recorded at exactly that time.

5)   We then use the X,Y screen coordinates to poll Google Earth and transform those coordinates into latlongs. In effect we ‘cast’ a ray from a specific location on screen onto the virtual globe.

6)   Using the API we record the lat long from the end of the cast ray and put it into a database (see diagram below)

7)   This data is processed to render the heat-map.

There are obvious far more technical details that this but for the moment we thought we'd just get the idea out.

Problems with Eye-Tracking Maps:  There are a couple of inherent issues to do with eye-tracking virtual globe maps that have already occurred to us:

• High Altitude Zooms:  At both high and low altitude the fixation is captured as a point, at a high zoom the user may be looking at a larger feature.  A circle polygon would better represent the fixation at altitude.
• Tilt inaccuracy: In a situation where the user is highly tilted, the inherent inaccuracies of the eye-tracking kit get amplified - a small change in eye position can represent a large variation in distance on the ground. 

In the particular case study we've discussed today we don't think either of these are a particular issue but they need to borne in mind in other situations.

Cross Section Generator for Google Earth

Today I report on a nifty new tool from Mladen Dordevic of Declan de Paor's team at Old Dominion University for creating cross sections in Google Earth.  Cross sections have many applications from geology, geomorphology, archaeology and even meteorology.  However, putting them in Google Earth has always been a hassle requiring the messy creation of a sketchup model (if, like me, you're not well practiced using that tool) and export into Google Earth.

Screen shot of the tool in action in Hawaii

cross section image taken from here 

The tool:  What Mlarden has created is a tool for taking two images (one for the front, one for the back of a virtual billboard) and putting them back to back.  You get the ability to control yaw, pitch, orientation, height and width of your model (yaw and pitch are really difficult with a sketchup model).  The great thing about putting a cross section in Google Earth is that its in context - users can get a sense of location and scale of the cross section without even having to think about it.  The final step of creation is to generate a .kmz file that can be loaded into Google Earth outside of the API.

But there's more!  That would be more than enough but Mlarden's also cooked in a 'rising block' slider.  This allows for the cross section to be conjoured out of the ground by use of the tour controller once you've published your creation to .kmz.  It's my guess that a significant number of student users never quite grasp that a cross section is from below the ground, by providing a animation slider bottom left of the screen users get reminded of this.

Technical Info and the cloud:  This tool is produced by using the Google Earth API embedded into a web page.  Its a nice example of the power of the API to enable functionality not already in the Google Earth client but it's also 'in the cloud' in the sense that you upload your images and these can be shared with other users.

Bigger Teaching Picture  We could really do with more of these little tools making it easy to create sophisticated, often used elements in Google Earth.  Declan's team has been plugging away at this and when I get some time, I'll be reviewing some more of their work.

UPDATE 4 Nov 2012:  Apologies to both Declan and Mladen for not spelling their names right, now corrected.  

The Power of Street View in Teaching

Streetview is one of the Jewels in the Crown of Google Geo and its a fantastic resource for teaching.  I've just delivered a 'Google Earth as GIS in teaching' session to PGCE students at Southampton University and took the opportunity to polish up my teaching materials, including having another look at what Streetview can do.  I thought I'd share some thoughts on it with you.

Views Beyond the Street: Firstly, it used to just be roads, now they've gone off piste with the streetview trike


and backpack

producing a range of resources including panoramas from the South pole, inside museums and on footpaths.  See the full Gallery.

HowTo:  But before I get carried away with the fun stuff, here's some basic instructions on how to use it in Google Earth looking at a classic Physical Geography field site:  Lulworth Cove.

1] Using the search panel, find Lulworth Cove, UK.

2] Zoom out so you can see the town immediately to the West and the cove in the same view. 

Rollover the controls in the top right of the screen > Click and drag the orange man > Drop him close to the cliff on the blue path between town and cove.   You will be transported into ‘streetview mode’.

3] Look all the way around you and vertically down at the ground by click and dragging the screen

Now ‘walk’ along the road/path by rolling the mouse wheel up and down.  Note that your view stays in one direction

4]  Select a good view, Create a placemark and call it ‘Street View’, click OK.

5]  Now exit streetview by clicking ‘exit streetview’ button, top right.

6]  Double click your new streetview placemark in the places column to fly back into streetview.  

This is handy as you don't have to do all the dragging and dropping of the orange man. 

Teaching Tips - the Cove:  If you're due to go to Lulworth cove, using streetview has obvious uses - you can introduce the site to students and explain where they'll go on the day.  After the trip you can use it to revise what they did and saw, helping them to link the parts of the day to the geography of the site.

The 'constant view' direction that you get with rolling the mouse wheel is particularly useful as you can show them what they will see on the walk out to the edge of the cove.  The direction should be set towards the cove - they shouldn't really be looking elsewhere!

Other Teaching Tips:  I think streetview is very useful not only for physical geography but also for human geography.  I've used it for schools outreach when looking at different neighborhoods, judging income levels depending on how smart the cars and the front doors look.  

You can use it in Google Maps without bothering to use it in Google Earth but I think the advantage of being able to 'tag' locations in streetview with a placemark and return to them at the double click of a mouse is highly useful.

San Francisco Earthquake Teaching Exercise

I've just come across an excellent teaching activity by Noel Jenkins of Juicy Geography about earthquakes in San Francisco using Google Earth.  It uses ground overlays to illustrate areas of liquification danger and earthquake amplification danger. Noel says he's tested the activity in class and that it could be used to cover GIS teaching too.

Opacity Slider:  One of the functions that is used in the activity is the 'opacity slider', this changes the transparancy of a ground overlay.  I thought it worth exactly how to use the opacity slider as its useful in lots of teaching situations:

1] Open the file that goes with the lesson plan

2] Expand the folders in the Places column until you have the data overlays folder open (click the plus buttons on the left of the folders to do this)

3] The elements showing in this folder are all ground overlays, basically images that lie over the Google Earth topography like a table cloth.  You can tell this by looking at their icons in the places column - a sheet overlying another sheet.

4] Tick one so it shows on screen.  Notice that it also goes blue, this means it's selected.

5] Click the square icon at the bottom of the Places column to the right of the magnifying glass.  A slider appears, moving the circle changes the transparency (or opacity) of the overlay.

Adjusting the opacity allows you to see the true image of the ground below and or see another ground overlay more clearly.


Useful Supporting Videos:




the above clip shows someone lecturing at the time of an earthquake (I think in California).  If you replay it and watch carefully you can see that most of the students run for the door and only one student does what they've been taught and dives under the desk.

The clip below shows an illustration of liquefaction, when shaken, the sand behaves like a liquid and more dense items (the building model) will sink into it.  You can easily do something similar with a box of rice which you shake by hand, you don't need the motor shaker.  




and this is what it looks like in real life.  The water coming out is a more complicated effect to explain but is related to liquefaction occurring.

London Olympics Time Tour Teaching Idea

Despite being no fan of athletics normally the London Olympics running in my city hooked me in over the last couple of weeks so I thought I'd do a teaching HowTo as my way of honoring the whole event.

Part of the Olympic Park in London with 3D buildings turned on

Teaching Idea:  In the tour below you can see that you can use a tour to fly back in time as well as flying place to place.  One of the interesting parts of these games has been the regeneration it promises to bring the east end of London so my idea is a little sequence to see the history of the site in 1945 and in the present.

Open the following file in Google Earth and double click the tour in the places column to play it.

     Olympics Time Tour.kmz

Obviously this 'time tour' idea can be applied elsewhere but its very dependent on what historical imagery exists for any place - you have to go and look to see what historical imagery is available for any location (howto video on using historical imagery)

How To:
1]  Fly to London and pick a  high altitude view.  This is used to remind students the location of the site, its all too easy to have students confused about what country/city they are in.

2] Create a placemark (howto if you don't know).  I've used the text   L O N D O N as putting it in capitals with spaces puts over the idea that we're not marking a place here, more a whole area.  Your placemark automatically captures the view on screen at the moment of its creation.

3] Fly in to the Olympic park area (search top left,  may help here).  Pick a view that captures most of the park, then create another placemark.  Call it 'Olympic Park - 2012'.

4]  Now turn on the history feature.  Its a button on the top bar of the screen with a clock and a backwards arrow.  Move the slider that appears top left of your screen to the far right, you should see that you can go back as far as 1945 and that your screen shows a black and white image from this time.

5] Create another placemark and call it 'Olympic Park - 1945'.  Google Earth automatically captures the time if you've used it.

You now have 3 placemarks with 3 associated views.  We want to move between the three views, to do this, find the placemarks in the places column (left of the screen).

Each placemark is made up of a tick box (turns the point on and off), followed by an icon which is then followed by the name.

6] Double click the icon associated with the L O N D O N placemark to be flown to its view.

7]  Now try it with the London 1945 placemark.  If you are not at that location already you will be flown there but Google Earth will also change the imagery so that you see the view at that time.

8]  If you are presenting this to a class you could just double click from high view, to current park view to 1945 view but thats a lot of double clicking.  Better to pre-record it as a tour which we'll do next

9] Create a folder in the Temporary places folder by:
 
   Click 'Temporary places' in the places column > right click > Add > Folder

Call it 'Time tour'

10] One by one, drag your three placemarks into the folder.

11] Now click the video camera button top of the screen, this will start the tour record bar in the bottom left of your screen.  Click the red dot button and Google Earth will record what you do.

12] Tick your three placemarks so they are visible if they are not turned on already.  Double click London, 2012 and 1945 placemarks icons in turn so you are flown between them.

13]  Click the red dot button again to stop recording.  Google Earth will immediately play your tour back to you again, if you are happy with it, click the disk icon and it will save in your places column.

14]  Make sure your new tour is in the 'Time tour' folder.  This folder now contains all the elements you need for your tour to play.  Right click the folder > save as and save it somewhere.  You can now send that file to others who can play your tour.

Its important to put all the placemarks in a folder and save the folder as otherwise they won't show in the tour if someone else opens it.

Google Research Update & Elevation Profiler

See Labels > Google Research Project in the right column to see earlier posts about this project.

Work on our Google Project is going well:

- On the content front, after feedback from team members and talk aloud 'hallway' testing, the final version of the Google Earth tours needed for the tests have been produced.  

- On the testing software front Paolo has got the system working where we record both eye-tracking of subjects using our tours and events in the Google Earth API (e.g. tracking camera movements by the subject).  We are exploring the idea of combining the results from both but at the moment we cannot combine them directly for analysis.  

Google Earth tour Sound: We have identified that there is incompatibility between playing sound on Macs and PCs from tours.   When he has some time, Paolo has promised to write up a HowTo post here on a work around.

Elevation Profile in Google Earth:  As part of the work I've been thinking about how to use cross sections or elevation profiles to visualize topography.  I thought I'd write up some features of the elevation profiler I've explored that are quick and easy to use for showing elevation.   

Problem:  I want to show the user the topography of a river valley.  In areas of dramatic topography such as the Grand Canyon you can just tilt the Google Earth camera and the user gets the idea of what the valley is like.  However, in our study area the valley landscape I want to show is much more subtle, the slopes need to be exaggerated to show up.  Also, when you are considering topography across a large distance (say the elevation of the Amazon) topography will naturally be subtle compared to the long length of the feature.

Solution:  Use an elevation profile feature of lines to exaggerate the topography.

HowTo:  

1] Find the area you want to draw a cross section across.  Use the path tool (its a button on the top line of Google Earth with a line with blobs icon) draw a simple line across part of the feature, you should use a click ONLY at the start and the end. 

2] Once you have named and saved your line, find it in the places column to the left.  Right click it and select 'Show elevation profile'.  An elevation cross section will appear at the bottom of the screen.  You can click within the profile and a red arrow will appear on screen to show the elevation at any point on your line.

3] move the mouse within the elevation and a vertical line and red arrow show the height at any point.  

4] A nice trick is to draw a deliberately short line section and lengthen it.  To do this, right click the line in places column > properties.  Now find the end of the line you marked (a blue or red square) and click and drag it.  As the line lengthens the profile dynamically grows.  This allows for all kinds of teaching questions, e.g. in my case I could start with the line going down just one slope and ask students to predict the rest of the profile on paper.  You then complete the profile dragging the line out and the true cross section is revealed and have a competition on who drew the best profile.

Teaching Point:  Its important to remind the students that what they're looking at is an exaggerated section otherwise they may get the idea that the topography is as dramatic as it looks.  I would do this by tilting down to view the line in Google Earth and asking the students why the topography doesn't look the same as the profile.  You could also ask them to calculate what the exaggeration is by reading off values from the vertical and horizontal axes.

Fusion Tables for Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)

VGI Background: There is a lot of discussion about Maps Crowdsourcing (or Volunteered Geographic Information - VGI) on the web at the moment. The excellent Geospatial Revolution clips are an example, this one discusses VGI as used by Open Street Map and Ushahidi in Haiti:

Note: Starts playing at relevant point in movie clip

I've just revamped a lecture for next week discussing VGI in depth and I wanted to get students to create and upload some VGI data but also to understand how to create a very simple VGI system. The solution was Google Fusion Tables.

Fusion Tables Background: For a while now I've heard Mano Marks amongst others pushing the geo capabilities of fusion tables (up coming where 2.0 example), this is the first time I've found an application for them. Neo-Geography is a term for all the new uses of interactive maps and map like visualisations appearing on the web, services like Google Maps, Google Earth are examples, they principally allow the public to visualise geographic data. What is so different about fusion tables is that they offer the ability not just to visualise but also to get into simple analysis of geographic data. Thus in Google Earth I can see Haitian refugee camps but with Fusion tables, it becomes easy to color code them by size. Fusion tables are also free and a lot more simple to operate than desktop GIS.

HowTo: Create VGI Thematic map: The following HowTo takes you through the steps of creating a database, uploading VGI data in the forms of polygons, defining a palette and outputting the result.

1] In GEarth digitise a number of polygons and give each of them a variable value (just 2 digits, no text) in the description box. E.g. I get students to digitise clumps of trees around Mt St Helens and give them a percentage tree cover value. Put all the polygons in a folder then save the folder as a KML file.

2] Go to the fusion tables site. If you do not already have a Google account you will need to set one up.

3] Click on File > New table > Import data > From this computer > Choose file, then upload your kml file. Click next then check the import columns include a 'description' column before clicking 'next' again to accept. Write a relevant description in the ‘Description’ box presented, then click Finish.

4] Your data should appear in a table with columns for description, name, and geometry. The Geometry column is the data Google Earth uses to draw each polygon, click on one of the kml labels to see the list of lat longs it uses.

5] Click on Visualize > Map. Your polygons should appear in a mashup using Google Maps, select ‘Satellite’ top right to see the true terrain. You will notice they are a default red at present. To create a simple thematic map we will apply a palette to the polygons colouring them a different colour depending on the percentage cover entered in GEarth.

6] Click on Visualize > Table to switch back to table view. Select Edit (on the menu bar) > Modify Columns > description > Type > Number > Save. This changes the percentages you entered in the GEarth description balloons from text to numeric values and you will see the description column right justify itself as a result.

7] Switch back to map view, now select Configure Styles (on the top of

the map) > Polygons, Fill colour > Buckets

Click the Radio button and on the pull down menu select 5 buckets. Select Column > description.

8] By default you have been given equal sized buckets (20% each), change them if you want. You should change the colours in the pull down menus on the right of the dialogue box to something appropriate. Click Save to apply this palette.

You should now see your palette displayed.

9] Now you have set up your VGI system, add others to the fusion table (share button top right of your fusion table web page > choose collaborators who can edit).

10] Get your volunteers to complete step [1] then access the fusion table and choose File > Import more rows to upload their own polygons.

Viola! A basic VGI system.

Google Earth Presentation II

Last weeks tutorial on creating presentations was complex so I produced an XL spreadsheet to simplify things. The instructions to use this are:

How To Make Your own Presentation:

1. You will need a Google Account so you can create Google docs and to be able to produce a Presentation in docs.
2. In Google Docs create your presentation (relevant help).
3. Click Share (top right) > Publish/Embed then copy the link that appears under the 'Your document is viewable at'. Paste this text (beginnin "https://..." into cell C2 of this spreadsheet. Select the big cell with lots of text below it and right click > Copy.
4. Back in GEarth, select 'temporary places' in the places column and right click > Paste. Click on the cross to the left of 'KmlFile' to expand your list. You've just created a set of 10 placemarks with links to your presentation. If your presentation is less than 10 slides long you can delete the unnecessary placemarks.
5. Choose your starting position, generally you want to start with a high view covering all the locations if that's possible. Select the ''Presentation" folder and create a tour flying from here to your first location (tour creation howto). Call it something sensible, e.g. "tour 1"
6. Drag your Tour up the list until it is above the "**Click for Slide1**" text
7. You can now test your presentation, double click the tour then when its complete, click the line "**Click for Slide1" and you should see your presentation slide in.
8. Repeat steps 5 and 6 creating lots of tours that you drag inbetween the slide placemarks.
9. Select the KmlFile icon and Right click > save as to save the presentation.

Google Earth Presentation

Edit 16/2/11: Corrected broken link to presentation example

If you're like me you make presentations using PowerPoint and GEarth and spend your time flicking between the two. This isn't very slick and I think a combination of the two would be very powerful. It turns out it isn't difficult to do taking advantage of Google Docs Presentations and the integrated web browser in GEarth. Download this presentation example.

To run the presentation:

1. Click the link that starts "https"; the lower of the 2 lines to the right of the slide 1 in the Places Column.*
2. The first presentation slide opens in the browser (it may delay on the first slide). Click the right arrow that appears bottom left of the screen repeatedly to make the presentation build up . Continue until the text '<- Back' appears bottom right.
3. Now double click the "High to London" tour in the Places column. GEarth flies to London.
4. Repeat [1] for slide 2
5. Repeat [2] for slide 2
6. Repeat [3] but click "London to Shropshire" tour instead
7. Repeat [1] for slide 3

*If you click the line 'slide 2' you will open a balloon rather than opening the browser directly. If you click the tick box icon to the right the tick will disappear but nothing else will appear to happen at all.

It's a little fiddly but better than flicking between PowerPoint and GEarth.

How To Make Your own Presentation:

**NB: For simpler process via a spreadsheet see this later post

1. You will need a Google Account so you can create Google docs and to be able to produce a Presentation in docs.
2. I used incremental reveal to make the slide develop step by step but you don't have to. You may want to make the last increment of each slide read 'next tour' as I did so that you know when the end of the slide is reached, otherwise you may keep clicking and go onto the next slide at the wrong time.
3. In Google Docs Produce your presentation (relevant help).
4. In GEarth Produce a project folder (click 'temporary places' in the places column so it gets a blue background then right click > Add > Folder).
5. Choose your starting position, generally you want to start with a high view covering all the locations if that's possible. Create a tour flying from here to your first location (tour creation howto). Call it something sensible, e.g. "tour 1"
6. Now create a placemark, in the dialogue box that opens, click the icon button in the top right corner. In the new dialogue that opens choose 'no icon' at the bottom. This means no icon appears in the main screen, this placemark will just carry the link to the presentation. Click 'OK' once to get back to the main 'Edit Placemark' dialogue but don't close it yet.
7. Open your Google Docs presentation in a browser. Click Share (top right) > Publish/Embed then copy the link that appears under the 'Your document is viewable at'. Paste this text into the big description box of the placemark dialogue in Google Earth.
8. At the end of the text add the string "&skipauth=true&start=0". There must be no spaces and it should end up looking like this: "https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dg7jd85c_27c3mm9bf7&skipauth=true&start=0" (i.e. everything will be the same except the text between 'id=' and '&skipauth=...' and it should all be on one line in GEarth).
9. The string of text you added tells the browser to open the presentation at slide zero. Confusingly, to the browser slides are numbered "0,1,2..." rather than "1,2,3..." hence we start at slide 0.
10. Name your placemark "Slide 1" Click OK in the dialogue box and you should see a placemark appear in the places column. clicking the link should open the first slide in the browser window.
11. Record a tour from the current location to your next location.
12. Select Slide 1 placemark in places column, Right Click > Copy then Right Click > Paste. Drag the new placemark down the places column to the correct location. Right click > properties and change the '0' on the end of the string in the description box to a '1'. Click OK. If you now select the link in this new placemark you should see the next slide of your presentation.
13. Repeat steps [11] and [12] as many times as necessary. I would advise you to put in an intermediate high point between 2 locations if they are both low as I did between London and Shropshire as this allows users to see where they've been and where they're going.
14. Now make sure all placemarks and tours are in the folder you created in step [4], drag them in if necessary. Select that folder and Right click > save as to save the presentation.

Notes:

• No Offline: This technique can't be used offline as the presentation tool only works when you're online. If you won't get wifi where you're going the only slick alternative is to pre-record movie clips of tours in Google Earth and embed those in your PowerPoint. Its trustworthy but takes a lot of time.
• Videos: You can embed youtube clips and similar multimedia in the presentation which would be useful.
• Markers: If you wish to mark locations on the ground you can add a 'markers' sub folder as I have and put in placemarks, polygons as you wish.

I don't know how much development work it would be but this would obviously be much slicker and easier if you could record the opening of the browser and the URL it calls in tours and control it with a universal 'Next/Previous' pair of buttons that worked both GEarth and the presentation.