My map quest
Posted: Tuesday, June 02, 2009 4:30 PM by Will Femia
While it's not typical for a TV show's Web support to contribute much to the actual on-air content, last week I got to participate in the production of a segment about an effort to plot as much as we know about North Korea on a Google Earth map file. The segment was based on this Wall Street Journal piece but you can download the file directly from the blog of one of the main participants in the project here.
If you aren't able to make Google Earth work for whatever reason* I plotted some of the interesting points on Google Maps as well on this page so you don't have to do quite the amount of hunting I had to do.
You can see the segment itself here.
As long as I'm mentioning playing with Google Earth, I was also really amazed by the Map of the Fallen that launched last week. The file plots all of the coalition caualties in Iraq and Afghanistan and draws arcs around the world from the person's home town to where they died. It also shows some personal biographical information on the American servicemembers.
*For those not familiar or who may have forgotten, first download Google Earth,then save the kmz data file to your machine and open it. On the left side of Google Earth the items that will show on the map appear in a tree. With the North Korea file I recomment unchecking everything and then just checking one category at a time or else the whole thing is so burdened with data it's hard to work.
