Apr 092009
A quick demo of how easy it is to the new Google Earth 5 plugin, which supports tours. No understanding of KML is necessary, simply record your tour, save as .kmz and upload to a web location. The Embedded Tour Player Gadget provides the required embed code. The Google Earth plugin needs to be enabled in the user’s browser.
To avoid irritating people without the Google Earth plugin, I’ve moved the demonstration to this page
My example illustrates Ethiopia’s controversial (aren’t they all?) Gibe III hydroelectric dam project, due to be completed in 2011. Great BBC resources here.
Very, very cool! Nice work and another great gadget from Google. See you soon. OB
Noel, I can’t get this to work for me. I’ve saved my tour as both kmz and kml, uploaded it, copied the URL, and when I try the ETP gadget I get a KML error message. Any ideas on what I did wrong?
It’s definitely KMZ only Jim. I got the same error first time and it was down to incorrectly entering the full path to the KMZ file.
Thanks for tip, information, background, everything! I did a bit of experimentation today on my blog. I found that the Jimmy Buffet tour without sound works very well indeed. When I set up the full *.kmz file (over 8 megs), the sound sucked up all of the resources. Good sound, too, and very loud! So I’ve not posted that version or any version which would appear to lock up one’s computer. I did keep the Buffet Tour without sound and it works very well. The *.kmz file for it is a lean 78K. It’s on my blog above. I’m very interested in apps that enable people to explore and then share their explorations. The Touring feature is a natural! Best, Jim Manley