Thursday, December 6, 2007

From Google Earth to My Maps

For neighborhood-level GOTV work, the complete Brown County map displayed in the previous entry is unnecessarily large. But if you have installed Google Earth, you can work with bite-size chunks.

Click on "View Larger Map" in the Brown County Bush-Kerry map, then click on "View in Google Earth".

Start Google Earth and open the Brown_WI.kmz file. Next zoom in to the area of the county where you want to focus your efforts. In the Google Earth graphic below, the view is zoomed to part of Green Bay.



Add a folder under My Places called Green Bay. Next use Ctrl-Left Click on the Brown_WI.kmz map to identify the voting districts of interest. Use Ctrl-Right Click to copy and paste each ward to the Green Bay folder. (You can also copy and paste from the sidebar, without using the map.) Finally, go to the sidebar and copy the legend folder in Brown_WI.kmz to the Green Bay folder.

Save the Green Bay folder as a .kmz file. Go to Google My Maps and select "Create New Map". Next select "Import" and upload the .kmz file from your computer. Your map should look something like this:



View Larger Map


And you are now ready to overlay your own data -- for example, geocoded placemarks showing newly registered voters.

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