Monday, August 11, 2008

Referencing Multiple My Maps

goKML.net
Barry Hunter of nearby.org.uk has created a way of creating a link to multiple My Maps at the same time. With Google’s My Maps feature you can display multiple maps at once simply by ticking the boxes of a number of My Maps. However the ‘Link to this Map’ feature only ever links to one of those maps. Therefore it has not previously been possible to send a link to a group of maps to someone.

Barry's tool allows you to enter the KML links for a number of My Maps and produce a single KML which will load all My Maps into Google Earth or Google Maps. As an example, I threw together some random My Maps for London (Blue Plaques, some videos, the My Map for I Feel Romantic) and created this single KML. The KML can be opened in Google Earth or you can right click and cut and paste the link into the search box in Google Maps.

I think this is a great innovation. It is now possible to mix up a whole range of My Maps of an area and create a link to send to your friends. Barry whilst creating this new service also noticed that Google My Maps now come with RSS Feeds.



This is another useful facility from Google Maps. It will be particularly useful for My Maps that are open to collaboration as the feed can be used to update you when additions are made to a map. As an example here is the feed to the I Feel Naughty (NYC) MyMap.

Via: Ogle Earth (Stefan Geens is currently using goKML.net's multiple My Map link creator to map his current trip of Sweden).

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3 comments:

Philou said...

Ah! My Maps gets Rss feeds. almost missed the news. (that would deserve its own article) I actually notice it and was wondering how long it's been there...

Keir Clarke said...

Yes, great news - I'm sorry I hid it away at the bottom of the post there.

Anonymous said...

actually RSS in My Maps is now a permanent feature.