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January 29, 2008

Display a Google Calendar in Google Maps

Tony Hirst found a simple way to place the events from a Google Calendar on a map. Assuming that the calendar is public, all you need to do is to find the XML address of the calendar, enter the address in a Yahoo Pipe that extracts the locations and generates a geoRSS feed, click on "More options" and copy the link to the KML output. You can enter the URL in a Google Maps search box and you'll see the events on a map. The items can be saved to My Maps or embedded into a web page if you select "Link to this page".

Tony notes that "the call to the Yahoo Pipe sometimes times out in the map. To guarantee the map displaying the KML feed, you could always save the KML feed as a KML file, then upload it somewhere and use that URL in the Google Map search box".

17 comments:

  1. what exactly is KML?

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  2. Google is always great for finding answers to simple questions:

    What is KML?

    Keyhole Markup Language (KML) is an XML-based language for managing the display of 3D geospatial data in Google Maps and Google Earth. All programming on these 2 platforms are done in Keyhole Markup language. Here is the official documentation for KML http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/

    Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyhole_Markup_Language

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  3. I'd love a way of being able to put a chronological slider on GMaps and then track things that occur only at particular times - i.e. adding a 'temporary' exhibition to show only between two dates, or, more advanced, tracking a journey over a time period.

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  4. I've been having a bash at updating my gmail contacts properly, filling in all the fields etc. I've noticed a distinct lack of integration opportunity there - with Calendar being one of them. Surely birthdays would be better in with the contact than a random event in Calendar... At least third parties are in on it

    PS:
    Totally unrelated, but hey. What OS do you use? I thought it was Vista from previous screenshots but your scollbars don't look like Vista (or Mac). Some kind of Linux?

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  5. The screenshot is from Ubuntu 7.10, while most of the previous screenshots are from Windows XP.

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  6. OMG i live on the isle of wight :D
    what a coincidence hehe

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  7. This work appears to be old. Is there anything doing this that is current? This does pretty much what I need but I get nervous when there is no activity for a long spell.

    T

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  8. Thane - the work may be old, but it does work. What are you trying to achieve?

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  9. This seems to only work with the current posts. What happens when I change the calendar? Shouldn't there be a way that it updates by itself? Otherwise I need to keep doing this every time.

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  10. You might like what I did

    Google Calendar on Google Maps on Android

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5AuxbPAaEQ

    Ash CTO www.ylabz.com

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  11. Ross,

    Sorry for the delay. I did not see your post to me.

    What I'm trying to do is to create a calendar that feeds a community map with balloon representing the events. I've created something that works using a Plone calendar module, but I'm hitting the wall on what can be done with the module -- even with heavy modification. So, I'm back again looking at directly connecting a calendar to a map. One question I have is it possible to connect more than one calendar to a single map?

    Thane

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  12. Hi, I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but which code do I have to put in the "Where:" field at Google Calendar to get the address mapped? Thanks for your help!

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  13. This guy has made this process a lot easier, all you have to do is plug in the xml link for a public calendar and the app handles the rest. Check it out, very solid.
    http://chadnorwood.com/2009/06/12/google-calendar-map/

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  14. Hey, this is awesome.

    I have just one question for you though, why do the output words for 'When' etc seem to be in German?

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  15. you need to change your address domain to .uk (or whatever) in the pipe URL as it seems to inexplicably default to German otherwise

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  16. Would you be able to embed this onto a personal website?

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  17. Yahoo pipes is no longer in service. Any other ideas on how to put this into a map?

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