Archive for February, 2009

New Developer Features in Google Earth 5.0

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Google Earth 5.0 is deservedly a major applicaiton release.  While the new Ocean, Mars, and Historical Imagery features are getting a lot of the immediate attention, there are significant changes to the underlying KML engine that will enable developers to create much more featured 3rd party applications.

Google has updated their KML documentation and have highlighted new and updated features.

Here are some quick highlights:

1. New gx:altitudeMode tags which provide ‘clampedToSeaFloor’ and ‘relativeToSeaFloor’ options for overlays, placemarks, etc…  See our 3D Nautical Chart exampe at EarthNC.com

2. New <gx> tags for Animated Tours.  These tags can be used to programmatically create Tours based on the new Tour Recorder options.  You can control location, viewpoint, view time (see #5 below), balloon pop-ups, and even audio narrations – all via KML.

3. Major Upgrade to the Balloon Window HTML rendering engine

  • Now based on WebKit (as is Google Chrome)
  • Support for most CSS
  • Support for most Javascript
  • No support for cookies
  • Links to Local Content disabled by default (unless within a KMZ file) – users can override in the Google Earth options menu.  
  • Support for iframes (no cookies) – see our YouTube Interactive Query demo
4. Polygons and Lines are now ‘hot’ clickable.  This can create user-interaction issues with complex datasets so it’s best to check previous KML to make sure it still works as expected.  Polygons will now autofill if normal/highlight behavior’s been set – also a potential issue if you have multiple overlapping polygons.
I’ll add additional changes as I find them.
5. You can now specify gx:timeStamps in LookAt and Camera views.  Google Earth will set the sun angle and historical imagery accordingly.  New documentation in the KML Time reference.

Posted in Developer, KML, News | 2 Comments »

Interactive YouTube Search within Google Earth

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Thanks to new features in Google Earth 5, we can now provide an interactive YouTube map search capability directly within Google Earth.  Simply specify your keywords and start browsing around the world for matching videos.  You can change your keywords at any time directly from your Google Earth ‘Places’ menu.

Get Started

Follow these simple steps to get started:

  1. Download and Install Google Earth 5 if you haven’t already from http://earth.google.com
  2. Create a starter query at the Maplify YouTube Map Search Page
  3. Get your Google Earth network link by clicking the ‘Get Google Earth File’ button
  4. Open the network link in Google Earth and browse away

To change your keywords in Google Earth, just click on the ‘Maplify YouTube Query Control’ link in your Google Earth places menu, update your keywords, and move the map to refresh the query.

When moving the map, the YouTube layer will update roughly 5 seconds after you’ve stopped moving or zooming.

Posted in Demos, News, Tools, YouTube | 3 Comments »