Fun With Google Earth

Visualization Tools

• IDLE output (print)• Excel (plots, charts)• Google Earth (maps and marks)

Communication between programs

Abstract representation

String(json format)(CSV format)

Abstract representation

Twitter Server your python program

Over the internet local disk

Your computer Excel

serializing/marshalling

deserializing/unmarshalling

Activity 1

• Launch Google Earth• Wander around a bit, get familiar with the navigation

(maybe take the built-in site-seeing tour)• Find CIT• Place a push pin– What attribute can you select for it?– Choose a proper name and description, maybe also a

color• Right click on your place and save it as kml file

Activity 2

• Open your saved file using WordPad• Does it look familiar?• Can you find the information you entered?

i.e., where is the name, description, coordinates, etc. stored?

Activity 3• This is a rather completed structure. I've made a cleaned-up

version, start.kml, that keeps only the essential parts. Download it and take a look using WordPad.

• In Google Earth, go File->Open, and open start.kml• You should see two pins.• Go back to start.kml in WordPad. Again, make sense of what

information is stored.• Can you move the first pin to another place by editing the

start.kml in WordPad?– After you've made some modification In Google Earth, open start.kml

again and choose 'yes' when asked whether you want to reload the file

Activity 4

• Using the modify reload paradigm, discover how much control you have over the displayed pins by modifying the content of the kml file

Colors

Base two, Base ten

• All of us can count… in base ten• Base ten means that you have ten names for a single

digit (i.e., 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9), after 9, you run out of symbols, so you carry a 1 to a higher position, getting 10 ( no extra symbol needed).

• How do you count in base nine?• Why base ten?• Computers use base two (binary), or base sixteen

(hexadecimal)• Need to invent symbols for base sixteen

DataPython

ProgramKML file Google

Earth

Reduce the problem to simpler ones

Create a KML file that puts a pin for each tweets, illustrating

relevant information

Create a KML file that puts a pin for a single tweet, illustrating relevant

information

Create a KML file that puts a pin, illustrating some fake information

Creat a KML file with content copied other

sources