I use it with the grid ive marked every place where there have been sightings and sounds heard in this area . I will be useing it also when I am in the feild to find the swampyest places I think he is hideing . Its a great tool

Mucho gracias Mangani...

I've been working on a TN sighting map via Google Earth, and after finding Your map, Your work has made it quite a bit smoother...

Once more, thanks for Your time and efforts in this...

De nada Randy.

If you don't mind sharing what you are adding, I'd like to suggest that you pass along the reports you have mapped independently in a separate .kmz file (PM me for an email address) so I can add them to the main project file. I know I have not made the effort to gather all the reports from the southeast that are online.

Gah! What are ya, some stinkin' Genie?

*shakes head* shopuld have figured that someone had already thought of this. Boy, am I embarrrassed.

This is FANTASTIC! Way to go! You can click on all the sub categories just to see where tracks have been reported, or just where the Ohio group sightings are, Texas, Penn., etc. etc.

Someone spent a lot of time on this. If you already have Google Earth, just click on the link and then go to "File" and "Save to My Places". Great job!

credit where credit is due I believe................

Mangani <<-----

there is the person who created what I feel is one hell of a resource for us to use.

Hell I hated Google Earth and deletted it everytime my kids downloaded and installed it on my puter, till I saw what was done with it.

No no, keep the credit coming to the Person who provided the link to Mangani's Genius !!! :wink:

I'm sure he won't mind !!! :biggrin: :biggrin:

8 of the last 10 posts above were merged from the recent thread "Google Earth and Sasquatch, possible tool for cataloguing sightings and finding trends?" started by PsychedelicShroom. The subject matter is the same and it's better to have just one 'conversation' going on the same thing. :smile:

:new_thumbsupsmileyanim:

Nobody said you should. :happy: The beauty of Google Earth lies in the price ($0), the photo images, 3D capability, user interface, etc., etc. The drawback is that you must be online with a broadband connection to use it. But the same data can readily be converted to other formats for use in "stand alone" mapping applications.
Yes. And you can also use GPS Babel to convert the data for use with other applications. That is how I convert the data, which is first compiled in DeLorme Topo USA, for use in Google Earth.

Mangani, thank you for all of your hard work! This is an awesome tool...really cool of you to share.

If you want to include any of the old newspaper reports I've found, feel free to do so. You could link back to the original posts in the Historical Archives thread here(?). Although there are stories in that thread that you probably wouldn't include, there are many others you probably would want to. Somewhere around 650 total to wade through. Check them out here:

http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=5705

tirademan

I've noticed a couple spots are quite a ways off from the sighting area in which they occurred, but still, by leaps and bounds, this map kicks a whole lot of bootay...

Good suggestion and on my to do list, but pretty far down right now. I would expect the effort would require about 150 hrs. Some day maybe.


Corrections are always appreciated. "If it is worth doing..."

One of the most interesting things I've come across in a long time, I can't believe the amount of time that must have gone into this, thanks for this.

This is simply awesome, it has really helped me out in finding sitings near by and looking at the aerial photos of the area in question. I think this thread should be stickied.

Hey there! Just wanted to let you know that the link from your site to download the KMZ file isn't working. Looking forward to re-installing this database (cleaning up my GE files n' personal waypoints).

Great job!

It just downloaded OK for me. Maybe there was a temporary server problem at http://bbs.keyhole.com .
Thanks for the feedback.

@Mangani

THIS represents an INCREDIBLE effort! I'm very new to all of this but, as far as i understand, there was no central database. Is this the first that contains the details it does?

Also nice to see that others are already able to use your work for their projects.

Awesome work. I had considered attempting to do this myself using GE, but i'm glad i didn't. Wow. Thanks.

What are the possibilities of getting the majority of the BF community in on this and having them notify you when their databases are updated? I would think that would help to keep yours up to date and make it a lot easier for you.

Thanks for your appreciative comments.

As to your question, I'm afraid you'll have to ask the majority of the BF community. :biggrin:

Actually, the BFRO (and the SRI) both do notify me - and everyone else LOL - when new reports are posted. They do this via an RSS feed / Mozilla Firefox Live Bookmarks.

Certainly it would be better if all the research organizations' websites had that feature, as otherwise I must manually parse through their data to find new reports, and I lack the time to do this thoroughly. In fact, I have yet to find the time to map any reports from several organizations. Also there is the matter of all the unposted (i.e., un-investigated, closely held?) reports that are not made available on the web, particularly by the BFRO (as can be inferred based on their report numbering system). It appears that the SRI may have a growing backlog of unpublished reports as well.

Somewhat surprisingly to me, I actually get very little feedback, encouragement, or interest shown, from the research organizations whose data I have been mapping, even though I am sure that they do get more hits on their sites as a result of my mapping work, which essentially is creating a geo-visual index to their reports.

So if you want my mapping data to be more complete, I would suggest you might directly encourage/support the research groups to make more reports available. Another action you could take would be to share the load and map reports yourself from one of the organizations I haven't found time to do myself.

In the interest of making things easier all around, is it possible to create a web interface in a protected directory so various groups can update it themselves by filling out and submitting a form? Then maybe this can be auto-parsed (serverside) and compiled into various formats, including GE '.kmz' of course.

The above may be a poor idea, but i'm thinking it would be best to find a method for the groups to make it very easy and convenient to update the data before approaching them.

Someone else mentioned about displaying by date and i can see the usefulness in that. If you want to investigate an area, it would be nice to only show recent reports. It's structured now by organization, but would it be difficult to structure it by year > org > type of evidence?

can't edit posts, so...

here's the GE web API documentation.
looks pretty easy to display google maps in a web page...
http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/

check it out:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://home....rry.kuh/pbs.kmz

that's only for the PBS group however. if i upload the whole database, google chokes.

Put this on the General Board, but since it's based on Mangani's data I'll throw a link here too.
This is his data for NorCal shown starting in 1950 and running thru 2006.

Animated Map

In regard to my posts above, i found out a couple things.

First, what i'm trying to do is display the database in Google Maps (online) which can be done using a KMZ or KML file (KMZ is nothing but a compressed KML). From here it can probably be embedded in a web page or whatever. There's a couple problems from what i've read: There seems to be 2 limits; 1 is file size and the other is the number of place markers. Even if i just export the PBS reports database, GM will not display them all (others have said the limit seems to be about 60 place marks).

Another thing i noticed is that it appears the database isn't displaying correctly, even in GE. I see that when i select the database, a "time line" control loads at the top next to the compass. This is really cool as it is configurable and can be used to display slices of time which you can then move along the time scale, which negates my post above suggesting to categorize the database by dates first. The problem is that the dates aren't correct. The database goes back to at least the 70's or so, and the time line only goes back to "x" month in 2006. Still, earlier dates display, but not all of them will display unless you drag the sliders for the time slice so the slice fills the entire time line. The dates on the time line simply don't jive with the database dates. I'm wondering if there needs to be a special date tag in the KML file (right now the name field has the date)?

I also noticed that if you set the time line (click the clock icon to open its settings) to be restricted to the current folder you have highlighted in your place side panel, the time line scale will only appear for certain folders (doesn't appear for international or ohio for instance).

big.Foot,

Sorry, you've lost me. What do you mean when you "select the database" in GE? I have never noticed this time line control and can't find it now.

I agree, time analysis could be very interesting. It is something I have been looking for ever since I started this project and it has been mentioned here before.

As far as the data fields, and utilizing a true date field, please remember, most of the mapping is done initially using DeLorme Topo USA, which I find is a lot better suited for the actual locating than any of the Google products, at least for the US. The Google Earth translation came along later as a way to share the work with a broader audience. Unfortunately, Topo USA allows only two fields, one for a hyper-link and one for a text label. So some sort of translation / conversion routine would have to be worked out to get the date info out of the label field and into a special date field in KML.

I'd like to know more about this time line display capability though, and appreciate your passing on whatever you can find out. As I said, my own time to work on this is fairly limited right know.

In GE you have a side panel and the directory structure for your database is displayed there. By highlight i just mean clicking on a directory, like the BFRO catagory.



Yeah, that's the cool part! I haven't read up on it so i don't know how it works. If you run GE and load your KMZ file, you should see a "time line" bar in the display in the upper right, just to the left of the compass. See the screen shot...

http://home.comcast.net/~larry.kuh/GE.jpg

I assume it's getting the dates from the title of the place marks. If you click on the clock icon, you can configure the time line and you can set it so it only applies to the folder (category, like the BFRO category) that you have clicked on in the side panel (highlighted). Funny thing is, the time line doesn't show for all of the categories and i don't know why.



Well, if GE is getting the dates for the time line from the name field of your place marks, then it may be really easy. Maybe the formatting just needs to be corrected for the name field... dunno.

Also, it's important to understand that the database doesn't appear to be displaying correctly in GE (i understand you started with Delorme). The time line dates don't jive with the database dates and the only way to display ALL of them is to drag the little arrows in the time slice thingy so that the time slice is the FULL width of the time line. Even then i don't know that all of them are being displayed.

It looks like it's close to being right, just needs a little tweaking. I'll play with it on my end and see what i can learn.

OK, i got it...

The time line in GE is getting its dates from the <when></when> tags in your KML file. The reason there's no time line displayed in certain groups, like the Eastern Ohio group, is because there's no <when> tags at all. In the PA Bigfoot Society group, all the <when> tags appear to be present, but they only have 2 dates:

<when>2007-02-06T20:41:16Z</when>

and

<when>2006-04-13T18:48:45Z</when>

That's why the dates in the time line don't jive with the database dates (dates of the sightings/tracks/etc.). So, GE is NOT getting the dates from the <name> tags.

Now it's a matter of reformatting the <when> tags and adding the missing ones. Problem is, i don't know how to do it. Yet...

Here's 2 samples. 1st is from the E. Ohio group and 2nd from the PA group...

I got the Eastern Ohio database working. I whipped up a couple macro's to add the missing tags and copy the dates in the name tags to the <when> tags.

Also, dates have to be formatted:

yyyy-mo-dy

can't have any missing numbers or non-numeric ("?") characters.

It's really pretty cool because you can set a time slice in the time scale, say like 1 year, then scroll that slice from the earliest report to the latest and watch the pattern of markers appear and disappear. It really provides a very cool way to look at this data and it really surprised me to watch the pattern of reports.

file can be d/l'd here: http://home.comcast.net/~larry.kuh/EOBIC.kmz -- this is just a test and not a final corrected database for the E Ohio group. still a few bugs yet, but it imports in GE fine with no errors and i have KML error handling set to prompt for all errors in the GE setings.

it's not very hard at all to reformat this stuff for GE, just took me a while to figure out how to make a macro cause i never used one before.

That's all true if you are using the GE version 4. I was still on version 3 that I installed in August! Duh! No time control display options in version 3. Now that I am at least on the same page as you, let me see if I can catch up with you on KML formatting.

OK, I'm with you on how this works and it is pretty slick. What application are you running the macro in to edit the KML files?

OK. I guess big.Foot lost interest. But I figured out my own macro to clean up the Google Earth <when> tags. It does require some additional effort during the translation procee, but it works. So, barring unforeseen issues, the data should all be "time-line-able" in Google Earth 4.0 with the next kmz upload in a week or so.

shoot, i JUST got the topic reply notification email for this thread. sorry

i use PSPad for file editing, which is one hell of a programmers file editor, second only to Ultra Edit, but it's FREE: http://www.pspad.com/

just in case it's still of use to you, here's the MACRO:



all you have to do is stick the cursor in the right place, before the first char in the "name" tag if i remember right, then just press and hold F5 (default) to keep looping the MACRO.

I am pleased to report that I have successfully modified the Google Earth dataset to include valid TimeStamp tags.

This allows use of the Timeline capability in Google Earth 4. Big thanks to big.Foot for poiniting out this new feature.

Instructions for using the Timeline tool.

I have been too busy converting data to actually use the Timeline much so far, but I am hopeful that it may teach us some interesting things regarding changing geographical patterns of Bigfoot reports.

you rock!

isn't it interesting how, around 1965 or so, the data starts FLOODING in?
this puts a new perspective on things.

another way to manipulate the timeline is to clamp to the beginning of it (settings) and then animate it (play).

Thanks, its a very good tool!

Austin
S.B.R.U.

This is a tad embaressing but i'm not the most Computer literate person in the world & i have just downloaded Google Earth on to my Computer, havent' a clue how to use it well & am at a loss as to what to do with these Maps & Sightings..

If i click on a sighting, it just sends me to the Deloreme website..

Is there any chance that someone could do me a quick idiot guide as to how to get the best out of the programs & Mangani's maps ??

Sorry to be a pain !!

not a problem!

on http://penn.freeservers.com/bigfootmaps/, near the bottom, you'll see this link: bigfootreports.kmz you can go there and get the file, or just click on the link i posted. save it to disk and, since you already have GE installed, it should open in GE.

I don't know why you are getting links to the DeLorme site. You may be trying to use the wrong file.

As big.Foot kindly states, once you have Google Earth installed, all you really have to do is click on the link to the bigfootreports.kmz file on the web site. This will download/open the file in Google Earth. With the current version of the file you may have to adjust the timeline sliders to see all of the reports. (I'll try to insure that the entire timeline is preselected with the next revision.) Clicking on one of the report "placemark" icons should yield a link to the source report, not the DeLorme web site.

You can also filter which types/sources of reports you want to see by selecting/unselecting the subfolders in the Bigfoot Reports folder in the Google Earth Places tab at the left of the screen. You can save this folder to your Google Earth "My Places" folder. Check for an updated version on my website every month or so.

Thanks Guys, that's a massive help...

I'll have to have a play about with it now to try to get it doing stuff but thanks, i really appreciate it..

@Mangani - i found another database for PA that has quite a few reports:

http://www.paresearchers.com/

Mangani, did you see this? Adding a sound layer to Google Earth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6639977.stm

The implications are obvious!

But I guess you'd have to get permission from purported sasquatch sound file owners.

I just wonder if this software will be released for others to use? But I'd bet it won't take long one way or another.

tirademan


Sounds bring Google Earth to life

A Californian company has created software that can layer relevant recorded sounds over locations in Google Earth, New Scientist reports.

Wild Sanctuary has over 3,500 hours of soundscapes from all over the world.

The firm is in talks with Google, although no official agreement has yet been made.

Its director, Bernie Krause said: "A picture tells a thousand words, but a sound tells a thousand pictures."

'Add-on'

Dr Krause has spent the last 40 years collecting sounds, and his recordings include more than 15,000 animal noises, and sounds from a huge array of habitats, including cities, deserts, mountains and the marine environment.

It is the largest library in existence of natural sound, he said.

He said the idea would be to zoom-in on a particular area and then have the option to listen to the accompanying sound.

"It could be a real beneficial add-on," he said.

The software is to be presented at the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose, California on 29 May.

Mr Krause said up to two dozen sounds would be show-cased at first, but many more would be added later.

If the project is successful, he would also like to use Google Earth show how sounds change with time.

He said: "People will be able to get a sense of before and after.

"For example, people are talking about how selective logging is an appropriate way of not harming the environment.

"But we have evidence that from the sound perspective, selective logging has a profound effect on the natural world. The pictures of before and after look exactly the same, but the sound is completely different."

There are many sources of reports that remain uptapped, and I do appreciate the suggestions.

I have been traveling and occupying my spare time with other projects for a while, so I am just now getting back to this project for a bit.

Here is a request for a little help from anyone familiar with the geography of Western Canada.

I have added reports from the WCSRO to the BigfootMaps project. So western Canada is no longer so underrepresented.

Unfortunately there are still at least 33 reports from the WCRSO with locations that I have not been able to map. If you can help please refer to the link in my previous post.

I was lusing Google Earth to examine parts of Maine when I noticed little purple dots - typically signifying a tourist attraction or mountain name. I clicked and found a reference to BFRO report #. Looked surther, and found more.

I searched BFF for info and found this thread. While I remember seeing this thread in the past, I have never downloaded anything from your data base to my Google Earth site.

Which leads me to the Q: have you, or BFRO, now placed sighting info directly into GE???

I believe that Google has included my data file in the Google Earth Community Forums Huge and Unique Layer. So if you have that layer (or all of the Community Layers, selected in GE) you will see "i" place marks for my data.

If you click on one of those place marks it will show a link to the source report and also a link to my post in the Google Earth Community Forum which, if you had clicked on it, should have answered your question.

Thanks

THat it was there was obvious. The Q regarded the 'how'.

Announcement - OregonBigfoot reports added.

I have just completed adding reports from Autumn Williams' OregonBigfoot.com to the project. There are currently 5,448 reports in the mapping database, with no end in sight!

Enjoy.

I am LOVIN' having those sightings mapped. Thanks a lot...I wonder if you've had a chance to try out the gigapixel photography layer yet? I am astonished as to the detail that can be seen from miles in some of the shots...what a remarkable modern world we live-in.