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Forums: Index > Watercooler > Genealogy tours using Google Earth



Pretty cool genealogy demo using google earth. Note that Google earth tours like this may be uploaded and launched via key click from Familypedia articles. Anyone interested in learning how to do this, drop me a note. ~ Phlox 00:22, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Cool indeed. I guess we're close to delivering the key data for generating such tours, that is, who are the ancestors and where did they live. I build a map of the birth places of my ancestors: Richard S.J. Tol (1969-)/ancestors. It is a lot of work to do this by hand. rtol 05:28, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Did you see how they put a family tree diagram out in the middle of the Atlantic ocean? Well, just for fun, try putting a bunch of points down like they did (use decimal notation for long/lat) then save as a .kml file. You can take a look at what the format is in, by opening it up in a text editor. It is just XML. Now, note that for a tree, a simple program could generate the points and labels all via algorithm. To move to the right a few units, subtract latitude. To move down, add longitude. So there is no need to do these by hand at all. A nifty program would be to take an ahnentafel file and generate one of these .KMLs. These files may then be uploaded as .KMZ files after being saved that way in Google earth along with whatever pictures and other annotations you want to put in. ~ Phlox 06:21, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. All we need is the connection between people and places and an algorithm to put the data in the right format. This would greatly increase our appeal.
I can think of 4 maps/tours
  1. Ancestor map / individual: Where am I from?
  2. Descendant map / individual: Where are my cousins?
  3. Ancestor map / town: Where are the people in New York from?
  4. Descendant map / town: Where did the people from Salem end up?

rtol 20:25, 11 July 2009 (UTC)