Making Your Own Simple Mashup in Google Earth

Transcription

1 Making Your Own Simple Mashup in Google Earth This exercise will teach you a few basic ways to create simple mashups in Google Earth using web links, images, and videos. 1. Open Google Earth 2. Navigate to Cape Henry, Virginia by using the Fly to command. 3. Select the Add Placemark icon: 4. You will get a popup like this: Change the name of your placemark to Old Cape Henry Lighthouse. 5. Next you will DRAG the placemark to its approximate correct position. Use the zoom commands and your image interpretation skills to help you to find the old lighthouse. (If you have the Panoramio photo layer turned on, this may help.) 6. Let s change your placemark graphic to something more appropriate. Click on the button next to the Placemark Name field. The placemark selection window will appear. Briefly review your choices. Since none closely resemble a lighthouse, we ll add our own. 7. Click on the Add Custom Icon button. 8. Select the file Light_icon from your data directory and click Open and OK. Make Your own [Google Earth] Mashup Page 1

2 9. This icon will now appear as an option for your placemark. Make sure that it is selected and then click OK. Click OK again to set your placemark properties and exit. The lighthouse placemark now appears with the correct name and symbol and is added to your Places menu. 10. We re now ready to make this a mashup by adding some content that is external to the Google Earth software. The Description tab of your Placemark Proeprties allows you to write in both plain text and html. You may add text, links, images, or Flash video as desired. 11. Before we begin adding content we should adjust the view if needed. Click the view tab. Take a few moments to orient your view to your favorite angle, preferable with good visibility of the lighthouse location, then select Snapshot current view if you want users to see this location exactly as you are seeing it. 12. To create a hyperlink, simply type the URL into the description box: Use this Example: and click OK. This created a web link within the placemark callout bubble. Click on the link and you will see that the web page opens within the Google Earth interface. 13. To use an image from the internet, type this code into the description box: <img src="{type COMPLTE URL FOR THE IMAGE HERE}"> Use this Example.: <img src=" This code can be inserted directly below your hyperlink. This results in the image being displayed in the callout directly beneath your link. There are many html techniques that you can use to pretty up your descriptions. For instance, if you insert a </p> between the hyperlink and your image code, a space will be inserted between the two. Make Your own [Google Earth] Mashup Page 2

3 Example code: </p> <img src=" 14. To use an image from your computer, type this code into the description box: <img src="{type COMPLTE PATH AND FILENAME FOR THE IMAGE HERE} > Replace the previous image with the image called light_exterior.jpg from your data directory. You will need to enter the entire CORRECT pathway (which WILL be different from this example): <img src=" C:\Documents and settings\mcleod\desktop\google_materials\light_exterior.jpg"> Click OK and your image should have changed. 15. To use a flash video from the internet, insert this code into the description box: <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value=" {TYPE COMPLTE URL FOR THE VIDEO HERE}"></param><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"></param><embed src="{type COMPLTE URL FOR THE VIDEO HERE}" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> Make Your own [Google Earth] Mashup Page 3

4 Here s an example (but the good news is that you rarely have to type all of this): <object width="500" height="405"><param name="movie" value=" ></param><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src=" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="500" height="405"></embed></object> Note: YouTube and other similar sites have an embed box or link somewhere on the page with the video. You can copy and paste this info directly into the Description box. This example was obtained by going to the following website: Beneath the video you will see an Embed box. Clicking this generates the code necessary for input into your Placemark Description. Try inserting the above code now beneath your Web Link and your Image. If you have done this correctly, you should now have a Placemark which contains a hyperlink to the Preservation Society, an image of the Lighthouse from your computer, and streaming video of a 1 st person 360-degree tour of the interior from YouTube. 16. A few common html codes: <b>bold Text</b> <i>italic Text</i> <br> line break <center> centers what comes between these </center> <left> left justifies what comes between these </left> 17. Finally, let s add a 3D Sketch-up model to make your mashup a bit more appealing. Right click on your Old Cape Henry Lighthouse in the Places menu. Select Add Model. Name your model Old CH Light and then Browse to your class data directory. Locate the model named oldcapehenry.dae at the path Make Your own [Google Earth] Mashup Page 4

5 Old_CapeHenry_Lighthouse\models Click Open and then OK to close the properties dialogue. You will likely need to zoom out and change your perspective to see the model at its proper extent. You ll notice that the model is not placed exactly where it appears that it should be. You can fix this by copying and pasting the coordinates from your Placemark Properties into your Model Properties. Do this now to achieve the following result. 18. Save the file for sharing: After you have created as many balloons as you want, you can either link them in a linear fashion in a tour (see the Tour Tutorial for how to do this) or leave them as a placemark cloud for the viewer to explore as they wish. Either way, you will still need to collect the placemarks, save them to a folder, and export them as a kml or kmz file. To do this, right click My Places and Select Add Folder. Provide the title Cape Henry Light, and go to the View Tab to force Google Earth to open in a certain viewpoint. Navigate the view window until it provides the view you d like, and then click Snapshot current view. Click OK to finish creating your folder. A new folder with your title will appear in the Places menu; to move your balloons into the folder, simply drag and drop the ones you want to share. Once all of your items that you want to share are in the same folder, right click the folder title and select Save Place As. You can save your collection as a kml file or a kmz file; the latter is simply a compressed version of a kml file and is useful if you are including a lot of high-resolution images or multimedia (i.e., files you may have uploaded from your computer). 19. To test out how this file might appear to someone else (the file can be ed or copied or shared just like any other files), right click the folder title and select Delete Contents to remove your folder. Close Google Earth, navigate to where you saved your file, and double click the file to load it and Google Earth at the same time. This (more or less) will be how others will first see your mashup after opening your kml or kmz file. Make Your own [Google Earth] Mashup Page 5