Friday, January 16, 2015

GoogleEarth for Genealogists

Hello Everyone!
I'm settled into our new 'digs' now for winter. Glad to see it's finally warmed up at home. It stays right around 29C here with nights at 20C so very pleasant.
I will not be blogging as much as 'normal' this winter as I've got numerous projects on the go, but I will attempt to keep you posted about anything really exciting.
I have talked about GoogleEarth previously, but thought it worthwhile to share again. So read on!!


Thanks to Lisa Louise Cooke here's how to use GoogleEarth for plotting your ancestors homes.

While it is certainly interesting to locate an ancestor's home on the globe, you can't see much detail from the virtual sky looking down over the area. To get an up-close-and-personal look at a location, we will need to employ Google Earth's Street View function. Street View offers you a panoramic view from various positions on the street.

Once you've downloaded and opened Google Earth, start by typing in the house where one set of your grandparents lived. If you don't have that address, consider conducting this exercise for your childhood home.

1. Go to the Layers panel, and select Street View from the list of options.

2. Zoom in closer to the location until camera icons appear on the street. Zoom in close enough to see the cameras directly in front of the home.

3. Hover your mouse over the camera icon directly in front of the house. This will reveal the approximate address where the Street View photos were taken.

4. Click the camera icon once to reveal a pop-up dialogue box. The box will include:
• a photo of the location
• the approximate address
• a link that shows a full-screen street view
• a link to plot the location in Google Maps
• a link to get the code to embed the image on your website
• the date the image was taken and copyrighted
5. Click on the Show Full Screen link to enter Street View. (You also can go directly to Street View by double-clicking a camera icon.)

6. You will notice that it takes a moment to process your request. Soon the image appears as a sphere representing the panoramic nature of the view you are about to get. Then Google Earth appears to zoom directly inside the sphere. Visualize yourself standing inside the spherical photo at the specific point on that street. You can turn around 360 degrees standing in that one position and see from any vantage point within that spherical photo. You are now virtually visiting that neighborhood!


And for those of us whose ancestors homesteaded, here's an excellent article on how to use GoogleEarth to plot their Canadian land http://lisalouisecooke.com/2015/01/google-earth-for-canada-genealogy/


So that's it for now. Have a great day all,
Pat


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