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Another way to show a neat map on your website

June 22, 2008 by mickmel Leave a Comment

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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

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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:

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

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

June 22, 2008 by mickmel Leave a Comment

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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

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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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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:

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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.

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.

Very cool augmented reality program for Android

June 20, 2008 by mickmel Leave a Comment

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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.

Public transportation now available on Google Maps Mobile

June 5, 2008 by mickmel Leave a Comment

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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

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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:

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Disney World 3D has finally arrived in Google Earth

June 4, 2008 by mickmel Leave a Comment

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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:

Firefox 3 RC2 now available

June 4, 2008 by mickmel Leave a Comment

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About three weeks after RC1 was unveiled, Firefox 3 RC2 has just been released. Get it here!

No word yet on what’s new, but I expect it’s mostly bug fixes and things of that nature. If you know of any substantial improvements, please let us know in the comments. Given how great RC1 has performed, I’m quite excited to fire up RC2.

Twitter, FriendFeed and your church website

June 2, 2008 by mickmel Leave a Comment

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By now, you’ve probably heard all about Twitter, the very popular micro-blogging service. If not, here is a short video explaining it:

At our church, we struggled for a while to find a good way to use this to help reach our congregation, but we’re finally starting to use it effectively. We’ve come up with a few good uses for it so far:

http://twitter.com/mtbethelumc — This is essentially just a feed from our blog, using the WordPress plug-in called Twitter Tools. We plan to expand it to cover more topics, but it’s just a blog feed for now.
http://twitter.com/mtbethelmusic — Our Senior High Choir Tour is currently in progress, and they’re using Twitter to keep the congregation (especially their parents!) informed about the trip. We’ve done this with other trips, with decent success.
http://twitter.com/mtbethelrec — We have a very active recreation ministry, and this is updated if conditions on our field are bad, so parents know whether games have been canceled or not. It’s very useful for the parent on the go to get a text message with the info, rather than having to pull up the website or call the church office. We also push this Twitter feed to our main website and our mobile website, using a free script called Twitter2HTML.

Other churches are starting to get on board. Oak Leaf Church has just launched a Twitter feed. There’s not much there yet, but they plan on adding things such as important announcements, prayer requests, etc.

The great thing about Twitter is that it works for users of any skill level. If you just want updates, click the link and read them. Want an RSS feed? Subscribe. Have your own Twitter account? Follow ours. Want to stay even more informed? Follow ours and enable text messaging.

All of this Twittering leads to a growing problem: fragmentation. Using our church as an example, we have a YouTube account, a SmugMug account, a blog, three podcasts and five twitter accounts. How to keep up? Enter FriendFeed.

FriendFeed is a quickly growing service that helps pull together all of your various feeds. We have a FriendFeed account that pulls all 11 of those feeds onto one page. I have a page of my own that pulls information from 14 sources. We haven’t started promoting it for the church very much yet, but I’m making sure our account is as connected as possible, because the service is growing very quickly.

How does your church use Twitter? Have you started working with FriendFeed yet? Or any other similar services?

Minnesota city demands removal of StreetView images

June 1, 2008 by mickmel Leave a Comment

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The 4,500 resident city of North Oaks, MN has demanded that Google remove StreetView imagery of their town

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. However, they’re not a typical town, in that all of their roads are owned by the residents (meaning they’re private) and the city enforces a trespassing ordinanace.

While it’s certainly unique, since no other city has made a similar request, it seems that they’re well within their rights to request that, since the roads are private.

It makes me wonder if other cities (with public roads) will request this. It would be interesting to see what happens with those.