Mashups Using Google Maps and Simile Timeline
Tony Hirst (OUseful blog) informed me that there already is an example of a mashup combining Google Maps and the Simile Timeline ajax-based controls. And with a little digging I found another example as well. Here they are:
- Jörn Clausen created a map/timeline mashup to show when and where earthquakes are occurring. See this example.
- Alistair Rutherford combines google maps and simile timeline with gTraffic, which shows traffic information for Britain. He is rewriting it using Adobe Flex, however.
A few more things here and there and these controls could be used as a basis for a general purpose history learning tool. As an aside, a while back I looked around for an open source alternative to Google Maps, and I came across a nice one called OpenLayers.
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Doug Holton, Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL.
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Recent Comments
I’ve been hoping to use both google maps and the simile timeline on this site, http://WikiMarion.org, but it’s a bit much to teach the students I’m working with to create the XML files, at least for this year.Their teacher was really excited to see the timeline output, but disappointed that there wasn’t a simpler (like, AJAXy) way to create them. Are we missing something?
Yeah I think they need a better interface for adding events. For now though, someone hack up a little interface to create the xml for an event for you, see this article:http://www.lifehacker.com//rss/geek-to-live%3A–roll-your-own-timeline-207426.phpand here is the form for creating events:http://www.lifehacker.com/assets/resources/2006/10/eventmaker.html
Interesting to see another example of a map with timeline. Thanks for the heads-up on that.Rob, creating a timeline couldn’t be easier and there is a great walkthrough on the simile timeline site. If you want an example file with all the tricks like embedded links/images and such download the source archive here http://code.google.com/p/gwtsimiletimeline/ and extract the file ‘stonehenge.xml’ from the source zip file. Creating the xml is the hard part really but once you have a template of sorts you can just punch in the data.
It looks like Ohloh is using the timeline too:http://www.ohloh.net/accounts/337/positions/217
I’ve been working on a Javascript library to facilitate map/timeline mashups – it’s more or less based on Joern’s code, but a little more robust and flexible. You can see the code here: < HREF="http://code.google.com/p/timemap/" REL="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/timemap/<>It’s currently being used to chronicle the current violence in Kenya on Ushahidi.com:< HREF="http://www.ushahidi.com/timeline.asp" REL="nofollow">http://www.ushahidi.com/timeline.asp<>Let me know what you think!