How to Add Google Maps (Bing, Yahoo and Open Street Map too!) as a background in QGIS In 10 Easy Steps

Last week I wrote a short how-to tutorial outlining how to add google map satellite imagery or map layers as a background in Opensource GIS software package QGIS.  Infact the OpenLayers Plugin allows you to add data from all the major online map players, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps and Open Street Map (OSM).

The guide was originally written for the members of the EDENext FP7 project, but is available to all, and downloadable from the EDENext Data Portal GIS Resources page.

I hope it is useful, please leave any feedback in the comments.

Football banter through the medium of 3D Mapping

Some Aberdeen fans have been using Google Sketch-up to wind up rival fans in Scotland. By creating quality sketch-ups of scottish grounds with famous scorelines (favouring Aberdeen) posted on the stadium score boards and images of Aberdeen celebrations on the big screens.

Internet pranksters use Google Earth to wind up opposition football fans 

Bringing football rivalry into the GIS arena.  I like it!

Monkey Karma

A little more neo-googleography here in its loosest sense. The GISDataMonkey would like to share some good karma and recommend to you all those places that treat me well when I visit, whether its quality or value for money I shall add it to this map. I shall be adding more places from time to as I think of them (or as they earn it)...

View Larger Map

There are restauranrs, cafes, pubs, places to stay and I'm sure I'll be adding things to do too. Leave a comment on either the blog or the map to let me know if you take up any of my recommendations and whether you agree or disagree with me on the service, cheers!

Dynamic KML

The latest in the Google GeoDeveloper Series...

This installment outlines how to query and extract records from a MySQL database and create a KML on the fly to view in Google Earty/Maps or any other client. Mano Marks shows two different applications, one using PHP scripting and another using the python language.

A second demontration by Brian Hamlyn shows a demonstration using PostGIS/PostgreSQL and the GDAL/OGR libraries to create KMLs on the fly.

A useful addition to the video would be a link to download the scripts and syntax used in the demonstrations like was done in the previous workshop by John Coryat.

Enjoy!

Creating Custom Google Maps

The latest from Google Geo Developer series, John Coryat (of maps.huge.info and usnaviguide.com) gives a great talk on how to go about creating custom maps with the Google maps API. I can forgive him for dwelling a little too long on US Specific data sources, as he gave a very good presentation on how to go about posting data using the Google Maps API.

You can view the video here on YouTube and download his presentation as a PDF.

John described a number of different ways of adding data to maps using the Maps API, highlighting the pros, cons and trade-offs of each method. I list the main points I took from the presentation below, if they are of interest take the time to watch the video:

• Max number points and lines successfully displayed by the maps API in one map window: 50-150 in a view depending on user browser & system.

• Image Overlays: Whole image overlays & tile overlays.
• Whole image overlays.
• Unprojected.
• Projected.
• Tile image overlays.
• Description of structure
• Tiles cut from single images
• Static data tiles (can be different images for different zooms)
• Dynamic data tiles
• Simulated markers

This weeks presentation was a little more advanced than the previous one and assumed a little more previous knowledge. If you felt left behind a little and would like some getting started tutorials and other useful information the Google Maps API FAQ page is a good place to start. Check out their Articles and Tutorials. If you have further questions sign up to the Discussion Group and Blog.

Digital Geography in a Web 2.0 World - Presentations Online

I attended this seminar a fortnight ago hosted by CASA and the National Centre for E-Social Science (NCeSS) at the Barbican Theatre in London. An excellent event which highlighted how Web 2.0 technology can and is being used with digital geography in the research community, enabling new approaches in modelling as well as in the presentation of results for analysis.

There were some great youtube-tastic presentations which made even the not so relevant topics (to me) fly by. There were two highlights of the day for me. The first was a presentation entitled Geographical Statistics and the Grid (see it here) by Richard Harris & Chris Brunsden. It outlined how they had used the R open source statistics package in combination with a distributed computing network (The UKs National Grid Service) to run a Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) analysis. ...A little dry I know but of relevance to my current work ;-)

The second highlight was the final presentation by Andrew Hudson-Smith on what the future has to offer entitled Web 2.0, Neogeography and Virtual Worlds. GIS and Second Life anyone? Check it out here.

Also worth a mention, Richard Milton launched a new site called MapTube: A place to put maps. Not sure how long it will be able to keep the name, but it is basically a youtube for maps. As I understand it you use their free software GMapCreator to prepare your data. Stick it on your webserver and register the location on MapTube along with anything you want to say about it. Other people can then pick and choose your data and others to mash up onto a single map. See what Richard said about it himself and view his presentation here.

All the presentations are available for download here.

The Google Geo Developer Seminar Series

In my continued fit of Google Mapmania, I set out in search of more information on what I could do with Google Maps. I immediately signed up to two official Google blogs, Google Lat-Long Blog and the Google Maps API Blog. I'm not sure why there are two blogs I presume the latter is aimed more at developers than the former.

Any way it was from one of these blogs I noticed the upcoming seminar series entitled The Google Geo Developer Series. It sounded like just the thing to get me on my way and satisfy my curiosity on exactly what can we get Google Maps to do. The first workshop was entitled Quick & Dirty KML Creation (and is embedded below).


Or watch it on YouTube.com here.

A fairly simple topic to start, but it promises to take us deeper as the series goes on. Despite the simple subject matter to start Ed Parsons is right when he said in his own blog...

Almost everybody will learn something from watching this, from newcomers to the geoweb to the experts out there !

I thought the Spreadsheet Mapper 2.0 looked particularly useful tool, and I'm looking forward to the next installment entitled Creating Custom Maps which should be on YouTube in the next couple of days. Keep tabs on the future weekly seminars here on the youtube Google Geo Developer playlist here.

The Data Monkey Becomes A Neogeographer

Last week without evening realising it I took my first tentative steps to becoming a neogeographer. I didn't even know the term at the time, I heard the term coined for the first time two days later at a GIS seminar I attended (but more about that in a later post).


My Wedding Map: My first contribution to Neogeography:  View Larger Map

So what is a neo-geographer and how did I go about becoming one? Well there are a couple of fairly dry definitions of neogeography from Wikipedia and the Platial blog. But basically you become a neogeographer once you find an application out on the web and use it to start adding and sharing some information that you geo-reference (link to a location be that a point, line or polygon on a map).

I became a neogeographer when I dived into Google maps while I was logged in to my Googlemail account and I noticed for the first time the My Maps tab. I was looking for a way to mark on some locations on a map to email them to some relatives. I knew this was possible on Google Earth, which is a great tool but not something that you necessarily want to ask your retired aunt to download just to view your map. I was vaguely aware that it was now possible to do it easily on Google maps too.

In fact I was already aware that it was possible to add your own content on top of Google Maps. I had used Google Maps within a website I worked on 6-12 months ago where I used some quick and dirty javascript code to geo-reference a catalogue of publications (you can view the result here). But I was amazed to see that now 6 months or so on it was possible to create something very similar in a manor anyone could do, (even my retired aunt), and share the results with the world!

So I studiously spent 20 minutes creating my first little bit of neogeography before collecting the email link and sending it off to my relatives. You can view the Data Monkeys first bit of neogeography above...

The map shows some important locations involved in my wedding later this year, a rather boring subject if your not invited, I know. But my first little bit of neogeography all the same, and just in case you are wondering I will be adding more data to it as the date draws nearer....

Well done Google for creating such a cool tool!