Last week I found out just how nice people can be. I obviously like to get out into the mountains of Idaho and do most of my planning on Google Earth. But even the mighty Google Earth isn’t the perfect planning platform for getting into the Boise National Forest. Sometimes you need just a little bit more information and sometimes you need a lot more. In my case, I had an idea of getting some GIS data from our National Forest folks and making an overlay with the road and map data.
I figured the hard part would be obtaining the GIS data and shapefiles. I was almost correct. But the real hard, if not impossible part was converting the data I got from a “Freedom of Information Act” inquiry. My little program that process the GIS data was just not up to the task and would not make a Google Earth KMZ/KML file from the data.
In Steps Google Earth Library
I subscribe to an RSS Feed from a website called Google Earth Library and read the latest and greatest post from this website as soon as they published. So I knew the author might have some information on his website on how to process my newly acquired files. There was some information but nothing that would get me to the point I wanted to be. So I used his Contact Us Form as asked for some help.
It didn’t take long to get a response from my question. Matt Fox, the owner of the Google Earth Library website processed my files quickly…about 2 hours. How many times have you gotten this type of help and response time in any business? I just want to say “Thank You Matt” one more time.
The Google Earth Library website link: http://www.gelib.com/
If you want to learn more about Google Earth, you should head over to Matt’s website.
Thanks for visiting and commenting on this business story.
Tim Bondy
The Bondyweb.Com author