Tuesday, September 25, 2012

FieldNotes LT: Take geo-located notes on your Android device

FieldNotes LT: Take geo-located notes on your Android device
starGoogle Earth Blog
September 25, 2012 9:04 AM
by Google Earth Blog

FieldNotes LT: Take geo-located notes on your Android device

Nick is an environmental engineering student at UC Berkeley, and has worked with a professor there to produce an app that allows you to take geo-location based notes, attach photos, and export the notes in a nice Google Earth KMZ format. The app is very simple and works well.

Evernote and other note-taking apps offer some geolocation features, but it is difficult to get those notes into Google Earth. With this app, it's quite easy to write a note, snap a photo, and email the KMZ to anyone you'd like.

Here's the result of one I just did:

exporter.jpg

While the app is simple and works well, there were a few oddities:

1 - When I saved it, I had a few choices on what to do with the KMZ file (email, etc), but "View it in Google Earth on Android" wasn't one of them. That may be more of an issue with my setup than with the app, but it was surprising since the latest version of Google Earth on Android supports KML files.
2 - The photo shows up sideways in Google Earth.
3 - I had to take a new photo; couldn't select one from my gallery instead.
4 - The pin is on my current location, and is accurate, but would be nice to choose an alternate location.

In any case, it's a handy little app for $0.99, and could be very useful for some people depending on what they need to accomplish. You can find it on Google Play here. No word on an iOS version, but time will tell.

Applications


Dr. Art Trembanis
Associate Professor
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
-T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

"Il faut aller voir" -JYC

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