Shipwrecks

I am a member of a SubAqua club. We have information on the location of a lot of reefs and wrecks, we would like to use either Google Earth or Google Maps and put all of this information in one place where members of the club can see it but we would also like it to be available to any one who is interested. I have all of the information in 'My Places' but I would have to send this all around the club and then when people update it they would have to send their version to everyone else.
can someone help please? I am fairly new to this but it would be great to be able to do this and then put a link on our website.

Kim

Hi, Kim,

Welcome to the GEC

It's easy if you have all the info already in "My Places"

1.  If you haven't done so already, right-click on the header of "My Places" and add a folder.  Give it a meaningful name.

2.  Start to move your placemarks in "My Places" into this folder (drag-and-drop or cut-and-paste).  Save your new folder to your hard drive (right-click on the folder and "Save As").

3.  When you have all your data placed in your new folder and saved to your hard drive, come here to the GEC and create a new post.  Add a few lines of covering text explaining what you're doing, then click on "Add attachment" in the top right-hand corner of the post text box , then click "Add Files" in the new pane that comes up.  This will open an explorer pane, so just navigate to your new folder saved on the hard drive and add it to your post as an attachment. 

When you're done, click on Create Post, and the job is complete.  You can go back to it any time and edit it.

That takes care of the first part of your problem - you have now distributed your file and your members can open it and view it in Google Earth as, indeed, can anyone else who is a member of the GEC.

The second part - allowing the other members of your club to update it and distribute their updates is a bit more difficult.  The second part can be accomplished by setting up your folder as a network link.  This means that anyone who opens your file will always see the latest version of it, no matter how many edits you've done to it.  That takes care of distributing the updated file - your users won't have to download it every time - it'll update automatically on their computers.

The only problem you now have is to allow other users to input their data.  I'd suggest that you have a dedicated thread in the GEC and that your other members simply create their own placemarks, then post their find/new locations as a reply on your thread.  All you'd have to do is to open their placemarks, drag and drop them into your folder in My Places, save your folder to update your main hard drive file and then the network link will automatically distribute the new info when your members open their copies of Google Earth.

So it would need some ongoing maintenance work from you. I can't think of a way to completely automate it.  Google Earth wasn't really designed to allow multiple users to collaborate on a single project.  It can be done more readily as a collaborative venture on Google Maps since you can share authorship of a file, but I find that to be an uninspiring dog of a piece of software.

I'll have a talk to our Tech wizard and see if he can come up with anything.

Cheers,

Frank

While you're waiting for further input from wiser folks, Kim, I wonder if you have tried this:



Many cloud storage sites now offer the capacity for multiple users in a group to edit a file. I am guessing that if you set up such an arrangement for your .kmz file, and then posted it as a Network Link file, you could achieve the results you desire. I've done this several times with files I've written by myself alone, and as long as you give the new file the same name, so its URL is not changed, the changes show up ok in the reloaded Network Link file. I've never set a netlink file to update itself, but I believe that is also an option if you specify the update interval.



What do you think, Frank and Tek and anyone else? Do you think this approach is worth trying?

I have nothing to add. The file can either be attached to a forum or to a web server. The former way has advantages but some forums like this forum needs one to be a registered member to view the attached files.

Other than to create a web page for this aim, the only suggestion I can make is to use the Spreadsheet Mapper. I am not sure if it still works or is still supported (on my end, for two days, it takes too long time to create a copy and I stop, or it never loads at all). 

Hello everyone, thank you for all of the information. I particularly liked the 'create a webpage' idea. It is so obvious I feel stupid!! Our Subaqua club has a website so I can create a page on there then everyone can see it, even none members.

They say in engineering Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS). I really love Google Earth by the way, I think it is one of the most important bits of software on the internet. It is a pity that shipwrecks could not be added to Google Maps then anyone looking at a map of IE Torbay could then look out to see and see the wrecks nearby. But I also understand it is not commercially viable for Google to do this.

Best wishes,

Kimmaidment

Hi again, Kim.

As I said in my first post, it IS possible for you to add content to Google Maps, which can then be shared.

See this page

Cheers,

Frank