EarthNC - Nautical Data for a Digital World

Have a blog or website where you’d like to highlight Google My Maps or KML files? Better yet, would you like to provide your readers an easy way to view your maps in both Google Maps, Google Earth, and be able to download map data to GPS devices? We invite your to try our new TakItWithMe Embedded service which provides an easy way to embed Google My Maps and KML content as a live map in your website or blog.

For Example
Suppose you have a Google Picasa Photo Album with geotagged photos. One such album is of Stockholm Sweden by Stefan Geens of OgleEarth.com . If we visit the album, we find a ‘View in Google Earth’ link for his photos. To embed this KML file into a post on our blog we need to copy the Google Earth link.

The link is : http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/stefan.geens/albumid/4940634334642896913?kind=photo&alt=kml&hl=en_US

Open a browser window to the TakItWithMe Embedded Code Generator and paste the link into the input field. Click on ‘Load Preview’ and the map will load into the window below.

Next adjust the center and zoom using the preview map to get the look you want and click ‘Set Center and Zoom’.

You can now select which buttons you’d like displayed with your map.  If you’re embedding KML files, you may want to disable ‘Send to GPS’ unless you’ve tested that it works properly.   You can also create maps for geoRSS feeds.  In this case, disable both the ‘View in Google Earth’ and ‘Send to GPS’ as only Google Maps display is supported at this time.

Finally, click ‘Generate Embed Code’, copy the resulting text and paste it into your website.

The embed code for the Picasa Album map looks like this:

<iframe src=”http://www.takitwithme.com/iframe.html?url=http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/stefan.geens/albumid/4940634334642896913%3Fkind%3Dphoto%26alt%3Dkml%26hl%3Den_US” name=”takit-embed” frameborder=”0″ height=”415″ scrolling=”auto” width=”465″></iframe>

Simply paste into your website/blog where you’d like the map to appear. This is how it should look:

More Features Coming Soon
We’ll be adding new features soon including an ability to control which view buttons to display. Many KML files (especially large ones) will not load properly due to limitations with Google Maps so please test these first. GPS export of KML files also depends on a simple file structure.

To discuss our Embedded Maps feature, please visit our open thread in the EarthNC Forum.