Google Earth Integration Is Go!
Google Sightseeing is now fully linked up to Google Earth. Every post now has a ‘Google Earth’ link as well as a ‘Map’ link. Clicking on the Google Earth link will zoom your copy of Google Earth to any of the sights listed in that post. If you don’t have Google Earth installed you can grab it here, Windows only, sorry.
We’ve also made a Google Earth ‘Network Link’ that contains all of our sights which can then be updated from within Google Earth. To use the Network Link grab this KML file. Just click that link and a new ‘Google Sightseeing’ folder will appear in your ‘Places’ section in Google Earth. Give it a minute to load the points and your shiny earth should be populated with our fantastic sights. If you want to check for new points just right click on the ‘Google Sightseeing’ folder and hit refresh to get all the newest points.
There are bound to be a few bugs to iron out so if you spot any post them here. Thanks!
Any chance that the GE link will come down in the RSS?
Great! Just Great! Sightseeing in 3D… very cool!
And for MacOS X?
Sorry Andros, I didn’t make Keyhole! I suggest you whine at Google: http://earth.google.com/
Nice move.
This is very cool. Nice job.
The titles are a bit on large side when browsing the place list.
Why not classify the sites in subfolders?
It will be great great great!
Brilliant, thanks guys.
Agree with Teseo Sub Folders per continent, per country….asking for a bit much, but it would still be cool..
Cheers
Marc
There is no google earth link on the individual item pages i.e.: http://www.googlesightseeing.com/2005/07/11/globe-arena-stockholm/ so you have to go back to the main page to get the link.
UUh,
I’m using FireFox, and it just downloads the PHP file.
Lol, so it’s a bug or something…
Yeah those titles in browsing screen is definately too big
I am getting an error when using the network.kml link.. ‘fetch of networklink… parse failed.. etc.. ‘.. why is that?
i can click inside the link tho and see some of the bookmarks.. some of them are duplicates.
and there is a small problem because there are many same things example. 3 venice’s
and there are 4 pyramids of giza marks
… so this system need a little bit fixing
ps. sorry about the four post streak
and it would be cool if those locations were in alphabetical order
Kecin,
Go ahead and save the link. Then open it, tell it you’ll choose a program to open it with, and pick Google Earth. I’m not getting “refresh” as one of my choices, though. Time to check around for updates.
Awesome man. Sadly I am on vacation and won’t be able to utilize this feature. Hopefully when I get back I will be able to.
Hmmm…. I’m using Linux right now… but I feel like I’m gonna boot into Windows in the next few minutes. Can’t wait any longer to try Google Earth’s integration
Chris,
If i open php files with Google earth, i probably freak out, because i script allot of PHP. So that’s not very handy:P.
Kecin,
My firefox downloads the files fine. It sounds like your file associations are not setup properly. I send the correct Content-type headers for the Google Earth files in my code. It’s probably just the file extension tripping up some browser configurations. I’ll see about making the .php file actually a .kml file and see if that solves it.
Freshmaker,
As regards to the duplicate points for a single post. There are points with the same name i.e. ‘UFO’ but they do actually point to different sights. We don’t describe each point discretely so there is no name as such for each point in post. I could just number these UFO - 1, UFO -2 etc. I’m not sure why the sight names are so big in Google Earth. I’ll look into that.
Pete B,
I’ve added the ‘Map’ and ‘Google Earth’ links to the individual post pages. Thanks for spotting that. Extra large slice of pie for you.
Quite simply, you guys rock.
Olly: yeah i noticed that but there are marks that point the same thing too ex. venice but different places in there. And I noticed that there are 2 pentagons first is the real one and second is in the wrong place (or is it some thing what is called pentagon also?)
i concur with ironcladlou.
appears to be working fine now!
i’m so glad to see the integration… i was worried for you guys! i’ve still been checking the site but spending most of my time over at the Keyhole community BBS… i’m excited to be able to use both sites now with Google Earth! will there eventually be support to upload kml files, instead of maps.google links?
Does that kml file incorporate every post on this site or just the six I can view in the “sighseeing” folder?
Also on each post now you have the “Google earth” link. Where do we save the file to, to view it in Google Earth?
Great site btw.
mscwd,
You shouldn’t need to save the kml file for Google Earth to work. If you just have your browser set to open it automatically it will all ‘just work’. If not, just save the file somewhere temporarily and then run it.
This is excellent news! I love this feature
But I have to agree with Freshmaker: there is a lot of duplicates in the list I downloaded. For example, there’s three Globe Arena in Stockholm (they are all near each other, but it’s disturbing) or two Brooklyn Bridges in New York.
i think its ok if titles would be smaller OR that there were no titles at all because they are actually the same with the name or you know what i mean.
Wunderbar! I was getting tired of copy+pasting the Lat/Long. all the time! Only problem with it is, as others have countlessly mentioned, the titles are far too large.
Also, guys, the duplicates seem to be every link in the post, which each show different little bits of the sight.
i found a good example about those duplicate marks: gibraltar
there is 6 gibraltars but in different places in there quite closely to each other
Just a little bug I found….one of the placemarks for the Nuclear Power Megapost points to the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts…no nuclear plant there…not much of anything ‘cept a beach
The titles have gotta get smaller… maybe get rid of them all together?