Sparkzy.com

I’ve always wanted to take my photos, video, audio, and research, and write a book on traveling in the High Desert. Not the kind of book you would buy at your local bookstore or Amazon.com, but a PDF of suggested sites and routes. I’ve thought about creating web pages that combine all that media — but I end up spending more time thinking about mySQL database schemas and how to go about the content maintenance as opposed to creating the content.

I think that’s changed. I ran across an article that mentioned that Google was making it easier to find user customized maps. I dug into the topic a little further and found that Google My Maps might do most of what I’m looking for. After the jump is a map mashup I created showing some of the great views around Fandango Pass, California. I was able to combine geographical context, route information, photos, and a video. And best of all, it was easy.

You can grab and drag the map (left click and hold) to scroll in any direction. You can select map, satellite, or terrain views. The terrain view is especially good for convincing yourself that you probably wouldn’t want to pull a trailer over that pass. Clicking on the blue markers will show content related to that location. Try it all for yourself:

View Larger Map
If you go to the map on the Google site, you’ll be able to see the names I’ve given the markers. Much easier than going through and clicking on each marker to see what content it has. It would be nice of hovering over the marker would give you that name. Maybe there’s a javascript way to accomplish that. I’ll have to see.

I’m going to do more research, but I think Google My Maps is exactly what I need for this project.

NOTE:

• If you change the name of your Picasa photo album, the referenced photo will show in the map when you click on the marker, but if you click on the photo you’ll get a 404 page not found error. I had to go back and update the album names embedded in the links.
• I haven’t tried embedding any flickr photos yet, but I can’t see why that wouldn’t work. Or a Vimeo video instead of YouTube.
• You might want to resize any YouTube videos you embed. Paste the embed HTML code into a text editor. Multiply the new height you want by 0.825 to get the new width. This will scale the video with the correct proportions. Replace the height an width numbers in the embed code with the new numbers. Paste this edited code into the My Maps pop-up. Whole numbers only.
• Save after changes. It’s easy to forget when the ‘Save’ button is scrolled out of view. Then click on the ‘Done’ button to test your changes.
• Picasa photo albums allow you to create a nearly similar Google map showing where your photos were taken, but I don’t think they allow you to embed a video or photo content from another site. I like the flexability that My Maps offers.
• The Google My Maps User Guide is here.

A big thanks to Brian (a.k.a. Hardware) for inspiring me to take the Fandango Pass route. It’s encouraged me to take several other interesting out-of-the-way routes. Here are some of his words of wisdom, appropriate in this context:

When the map runs out, trust your instincts.