The Fusion Table data on mobile devices

We’ve talked a bit about Google’s Fusion Tables product before — a great way to turn a table full of data (such as an Excel spreadsheet) into a fully functional map!

The maps can easily be shared through a Google Maps interface or even in Google Earth, but the mobile support for Fusion Table projects has been pretty weak. That’s where the folks from Build-A-Map have stepped in, with a new product called My Fusion Tables.

my-fusion-tables.jpg

My Fusion Tables a mobile application that allows you to browse, view, and map data from Google Fusion Tables on both mobile phones and tablets. You can find it in the iOS App Store or on Google Play.

Find your perfect home with Google Fusion Tables

My husband and I were recently in the market for a new home. We worked with a realtor for a few months, looking at several houses every weekend. As we checked out each house, we tracked our thoughts about it in a Google spreadsheet, which included columns for the address, our pros and cons, individual ratings and the combined rating of the house.

One day, while my husband and I were rating a recently viewed home, he came up with a brilliant idea to put all of our home data on a map. We realized that adding geographic information to our personal opinions would help us find trends, such as which neighborhoods we preferred. A light bulb went on over my head: Google Fusion Tables!

Fusion Tables is a data management web application that makes it easy to view tabular data on a Google Map. Columns with location data, such as addresses, points, lines, or polygons, are automatically interpreted and mapped. The map features can be styled according to the data in your table. It’s also simple to share the map visualization with others.

In just a few steps, we were able to convert our spreadsheet into a fusion table:


This was a great start, but what we really wanted was to quickly get a glimpse of this data on a map. All we had to do was select ‘Visualize > Map’ from the table menu and the data in the ‘Address’ column was geocoded (i.e. converted into latitude and longitude coordinates) and the markers were displayed on the map. Clicking on the markers showed additional information about the house pulled from our spreadsheet, including the pros, cons and ratings we inputted for each location.

Our house ratings viewed in Google Maps (after being converted into a Fusion Table).
Fusion Tables also allow you to style the features on the map according to data in a numerical column in the table. We had the perfect column to use for this purpose: the ‘Total Rating’ column!

 

In order to color code the map markers by their ‘Total Rating’ score, we customized the icons based on a range of scores, with red representing the lowest scores, yellow show mid-range scores and green showing the houses with the highest combined rating. After saving these new settings, the map markers were immediately styled:


Our new map made it much easier to see what locations we were most interested in (the house just south of Redwood City) and the neighborhoods of low interest (those that were closer to the bay or hills).

We shared the map with our realtor and she loved it. It helped her refine the selection of homes she showed us and in just a matter of weeks, I’m happy to say that my husband and I found the perfect house!

Posted by Kathryn Hurley, Developer Programs Engineer, Geo DevRel

via: GoogleLatlong

The 2011 Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant awardees

The nonprofit mapping community is alive with amazing game-changing ideas. In May, Google Earth Outreach asked nonprofit organizations to think big: what kind of map would they want to create if they had the funding or developer resources to do so? We were thrilled by the number of applications we received, full of concrete ideas for tremendously impactful maps.

While it was difficult to select projects with the highest potential impact from the long list of great applications we received, we are excited to announce the Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant awardees. Each organization below proposed cutting-edge visualizations in the public benefit sector utilizing a broad spectrum of tools ranging from narrated tours in Google Earth to Google Maps and Places API applications for Android to Google Fusion Tables. In total, we’ve awarded over $300,000 to the Google Earth Outreach Developer Grantees. We wish to congratulate all awardees for developing proposals that we hope will help them make the world a better place.

These organizations are all currently making great progress towards their project goals. Within the coming months, they will complete development of their mapping applications. We look forward to sharing the completed projects with you on the Google Earth Outreach site, so check back soon!

 

 

Atlantic Public Media One Species at a Time: Stories of Biodiversity on the Move, with the Encyclopedia of Life (in Google Earth narrated tours)
California Academy of Sciences A Global Water Story: Translating immersive programming about water from the Planetarium to Google Earth
David Suzuki Foundation Our Natural Capital: mapping ecosystem services in southern Ontario, Canada
Golden Gate Parks Conservancy The Story of Crissy Field: the transformation of an urban park in Google Earth
HabitatMap, Inc. AirCasting: citizen air quality monitoring using Android devices
The HALO Trust Notes from the (Mine)Field: a Google Earth tour of humanitarian landmine clearance
International Rivers Network The Wrong Climate for Damming Rivers
The Nature Conservancy Adopt an Acre in Google Earth & Maps
Pepperwood Foundation, on behalf of iNaturalist.org iNaturalist App on Android: citizen naturalists armed with Android devices can upload photos of flora and fauna to iNaturalist.org
Save the Elephants Tracking Animals for Conservation: Real-time mapping in the field on Android and Publishing Elephant Tracking Data in Fusion Tables
Water for People SanMap: supporting sanitation-related businesses in urban African cities
When I Walk, Inc. AXSmap mobile app using Google Places API for reviews and ratings of accessibility
Widecast Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network – Bonaire Track Your Turtles: The Great Migration Game and sea turtle monitoring in Bonaire
World Resources Institute Google Earth Tour of Reefs at Risk
World Wildlife Fund Eyes on the Forest: Interactive map on Sumatran Deforestation

 

These organizations were funded through the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund at the Tides Foundation.