Favorite Asheville Places

This map shows favorite places in Asheville. By me, my students and the collaborative mapping tools in Google MyMaps.


View GIS 222 Asheville's Best ... in a larger map

Google Maps and Bing Maps head-to-head

In the past when I have talked with students about mapping API's by the big guys like Google and Microsoft I have always told the Google Maps has some functionality I like and Bing does as well. Last week, Bing introduced it's version of Google's StreetView (one of the things I liked about Google that Bing did not have) closing the gap on the differences. This week Google started offering oblique imagery similar to Microsoft's Bing Maps 'Bird's Eye View'. The two products are feeding off each other and really making a place for themselves in the geospatial world.

These two products are going head-to-head and the competition means good things for us!

Google adding trails to streetview

Apparently they are having people on bikes collecting streetview data ... how do I get that job?

http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/2009/06/google_adding_t.php

Jerry's Baddle Race map

http://www.jerrysbaddle.com

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Street view for Asheville is up today

The Google vans were spotted around town 6 - 9 months ago collecting street view data and today it is available. See if you can find a friend or yourself walking down the street ...

Where's Pete? (and Pam and Russ)?

Please ignore the straight line going southeast from the airport ... I turned on the GPS unit in a town southeast of the airport and it drew this line. I don't have the software to edit it our currently.


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Summer CIS Camp

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Another Google Maps Example

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Monitoring Refugee movement with Google Maps

I thought this was an interesting article on CNN ... about 4 headlines down this afternoon.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/08/google.refugees.ap/index.html

Hightlights of the story ... note the last one. Very interesting ...

• Google, U.N. team up to help pinpoint refugee movement
• Maps will aid humanitarian operations, help inform about refugee crises
• Special maps help track, give information about crises in each area
• Google considering stand-alone version of its mapping software for field work
  

collaborate with GoogleMaps

New today (on the heels of yesterday's addition of terrain data) is the ability to collaborate you maps (MyMaps) in GoogleMaps with anyone who has a Google account. I think I'll give it a try with my students in class tonight.

Bent Creek Trails ... in Google Maps ... in our blog

This past summer as part of our GIS 121 - Georeferencing and Mapping class, I had my students georeference a map of Bent Creek and then heads-up digitize the trails. I won't deny this class exercise was somewhat self-serving and selfish as I wanted some digital data of one of my favorite places to mountain-bike and trail run but it was a great learning exercise for the students as well.

Now that you can embed GoogleMaps in a website or blog, I thought I'd share the data here. I used the KML Companion to create a KML file from the trails in ArcMap and then passed the KML file to GoogleMaps in the URL.

Special thanks to 2 students for their help. Christy Caudill shared her trail data with me from last summer and Josh O'Conner showed me the easiest way to pass the KML to GoogleMaps.


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soooo.... i can't figure out how to imbed the Gmap with my KML on it yet. Hey, today is the first day they've made Gmaps easily embedable so i'll wrestle with it later but for now - here's a screen shot and you can get the KML file here too if you want to see it in GoogleEarth yourself!

See the Bent Creek Trails in Gmaps here!

Embed Google Maps in your website or blog

New today from Google Maps. You can embed a map in your website or blog just like a YouTube video. Check out this aerial of our campus with our building indicated by the blue icon. Zoom in to see it!

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