Live Deer Tracking

Last week Google Maps Mania featured the BBC's World on the Move map which is being used to track animal migration. I wonder if they will be interested in this White Tailed Deer Map?

This map show the movements of a white tailed deer in the suburbs of Pennsylvania. What is truly impressive about this map is the way in which the deer's location is being tracked. The map's creator believes that the White Tailed Deer Map is the first email to map tracker created using entirely free web services.



The deer wears a collar that sends an SMS text message to an email account. The email service is automatically set up to forward the message to a blogger account that then publishes the emails as blog posts. The RSS feed of that blog is then imported into Google Spreadsheets. Google Spreadsheets then converts the data into a KML which is then used to create the Google Map. The result is a fully automated map at no cost to the creator.

If you want to know more about the process there are more detailed instructions at the Google Earth Community.

Apparently the deer lives on private grounds so being tracked in this way will not help potential hunters.

Via: Ogle Earth