More fun ways to use the Google Earth plugin

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I just showed you

how you could add a simple location via the Google Earth plugin to your site, but how about a series of locations?

Using EarthSwoop, I thought it’d be neat to show all of the places that we’re sending mission teams this summer.  You could do the same thing for local missions, youth group trips, or anything else outside of your church.

So, I put in all of our mission trip locations, then embedded it into the blog on our site.  Here it is:

Powered by EarthSwoop | More info about this collection

Get notified if your site gets hacked

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BlogStorm has an excellent post today about something very simple you can do to help protect your site.

The problem, as they see it:

Every month thousands of websites get hacked into and have hidden links inserted into the pages by people wanting their spam sites to rank highly in the search engines.

I agree with them — it’s a substantial issue.  The bigger problem is that many sites don’t realize they’ve been hacked for a quite while; often they only realize it when their traffic from Google dries up.

If you get hacked, Google will stop sending traffic to your site but they won’t tell you about the problem.  However, you can build a few simple Google Alerts to notify you instead.  BlogStorm suggests you set up and alert that looks like this:

viagra OR cialis OR levitra OR Phentermine OR Xanax site:mickmelseo.com

If you get hacked even a little bit, one of those terms is bound to appear.  If it does, Google will let you know about it very quickly and you can dig in and fix the problem.

I’ve used Google Alerts for a while now to notify me of any news items that might have slipped past my Twitter and RSS reading, but this is a new take on it.  It’s simple and effective.  Great tip!

Build and share collections with EarthSwoop

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It’s time to roll out a site that a couple of us have been working on for the last few weeks — EarthSwoop!

Bits and pieces of the code have been used in some of my other plug-in tools, but this takes it a step further. Using the Google Earth plug-in and a simple interface, you can build collections of common locations, all viewed using an icon-based system. For some examples, go check out the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, the 30 Stadiums in Major League Baseball, or some of the venues in the upcoming Beijing Olympics. We’ve built 15 collections to get you started.

You can create a collection about any subject that you want. Once your collection has been created, the system will generate KML files for each location inside of it and give you embed code to put it on your own site. When viewing it, you can add other content such as WikiMapia and Panoramio to help provide more context.

Here is a brief video that shows how easy it is to start creating collections, and below is an embedded version of our NFL Stadiums collection. Please let us know if you have any questions.

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Another way to show a neat map on your website

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A while back I showed you YourMap, an easy way to embed a Google Map on your site.  Google now makes it very easy to do that using their normal Maps site, but here’s a new tool — ShareIt.

Google has recently released the “Google Earth Plugin”.  It’s a free plug-in that runs Google Earth (3D buildings and everything) right in your browser!  It’s quite slick.

The problem is that it’s kind of a pain to use it on your site.  The Digital Earth Blog just did a round-up

of the best ways to use it to embed a map in your site, but I think the clear winner for churches is ShareIt.  It makes it very simple to add a map to your site — probably less than 30 seconds to get the code you need.  Here is what it looks like on your site:

Powered by Google Earth Hacks | Map Details | Create your own!

Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

The top 5 ways to embed Google Earth content on your site

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Now that the Google Earth plugin works in Firefox 3 (Windows-only still…), we thought we’d run through some of the best ways to embed Google Earth content on your site.

5. Embed existing files and collections from Google Earth Hacks

Google Earth Hacks has over 20,000 files on their site, all of which can be embedded into your own.  In addition, their collections

can be embedded.  Both implementations are very straightforward, but require that a file is already on their site.  Here is what an embedded collection looks like:

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Powered by Google Earth Hacks | More info about this collection

4. Embed golf courses from Golf Nation

Similar to Google Earth Hacks, Golf Nation allows you to embed any of their existing courses onto your own site.  This could be pretty useful if you just played a round and want to embed that course into your blog post about your great score.  The quality of the files can vary quite a bit, so here is one of the better ones:

Powered by Golf Nation | More golf courses in Atlanta

3. Build your own map with StreetCities

StreetCities is by far the most complex integration we’ve seen, for better and for worse.  You have a ton of options on how you want your map to look, and it’s very well done.  It’s not a great place to go for a quick map, but it’s worth playing with when you have a chance.

2. Easily embed a KML with TakItWithMe

TakItWithMe was the first site to offer the plugin in an embeddable manner.  Their script is quite simple, and allows you pull a KML into the map.  However, the KML needs to be hosted online somewhere (no upload feature), which is kind of a bummer.  Still, it’s nice way to build a quick embed from any KML that you know of.

1. Embed a map in a few seconds with ShareIt

ShareIt is another entry from Google Earth Hacks, but this one takes the cake.  There are no frills with this one — just a very simple way to embed the map on your site.  Title it, find your location on the globe (either by zooming or by searching with the box below it), and that’s it.  If you want a simple way to show your house, your church, your favorite stadium, etc, this is the way to do it.

Powered by Google Earth Hacks | Map Details | Create your own!

There you have it!  Honorable mentions go to Tagzania and GMap-Track, both of whom offer embeddable plugin code as well.

If you know of any others, please let us know in the comments below.

Popular Science has a series of articles about Google Earth

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Popular Science is running a series of articles highlight various scientific visualizations using Google Earth.  Google Earth Blog has a great review of the series, along with KML files and links to other related stories.

The five areas they cover are:

Again, you should probably read the Google Earth Blog post while you’re reading the articles, as Frank did a great job of adding extra KML data and links to supplement each article.

Very cool augmented reality program for Android

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Google Maps Mania has just highlighted Enkin, a slick new augmented reality program that is being built for the Android platform.

You’ve probably seen demos like this before, but this one sounds like it’s pretty much ready to launch.  The developers say that some Android hardware will have the necessary components built in (compass, GPS and camera), so would expect that we’ll be able to use this software later in the year!

Check out the video below for more:

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Enkin from Enkin on Vimeo.

Firefox 3 finally gets the Google Toolbar

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For those of you that love the Google Toolbar, but have been missing it with Firefox 3, your wait is over!

http://www.google.com/toolbar

I figured we’d see it updated this week, since the public release of Firefox 3 is scheduled for tomorrow.  I also expect we’ll see an update to the Google Earth plug-in

very soon, since it still doesn’t work on Firefox 3 yet.  For that matter, there are a lot of plug-ins that still don’t work on FF3.  How many will get updates this week?

Public transportation now available on Google Maps Mobile

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Google has just updated Google Maps Mobile to version 2.2.  The primary enhancement in this version is public transit — now you can get information on bus, train and ferry routes right from your mobile.

You can download the application by visiting this link

with your phone, or you can read more on the Google LatLong Blog or on Google Maps Mania.  In addition, they’ve produced a short video to show off the new features:

Disney World 3D has finally arrived in Google Earth

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It’s a few weeks later than we expected, but Disney World is now 3D in Google Earth — and it’s impressive!  They’ve included the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom and Disney Resorts.

There are actually two parts to this:

  • The normal 3D buildings layer will add all kinds of visual goodness, such as buildings, trees, statues, etc.
  • The special Disney layer will add information about the parks and the hotels.

To activate the 3D buildings,

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simply check the box next to “3D Buildings” in the “Layers” tab like you normally would.

To activate the Disney layer, go to “Gallery -> Travel and Tourism -> Walt Disney World”.  Once you’ve turned that on, along with the 3D buildings, fly down there (KML) and check it out.

The 3D aspect of this is stunning, but be warned — it’s very graphically intensive.  I’ve got a pretty solid machine, and it slowed it down quite noticeably.  Still, it’s well worth checking out.  Have fun!

Update: Frank Taylor has just made a nice little video that takes you through the 3D Magic Kingdom.  Check it out: