WoO Maps: Maps pouring in

The last weeks, maps from Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Israel (see map sample to the right), Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden have been added to World of O – in addition to addition of map samples from some other countries. Why don’t you use some of the quiet Christmas time to enter maps into World of O? You find some of the newest additions by following the links below:

• Bulgaria
• Israel
• Finland (Jukola training maps)
• Croatia
• Belarus (quite a few maps)
• Italy
• France
• Poland
• Spain
• Sweden

Click the o-flag for a map, and click further on “View all available info” to get up the page for the map, including a large map sample, for those maps which have a map sample. Note that it is now possible to link directly to a specific location in “World of O Maps”, as shown using the links above. To get the link to a specific place, just click the link-symbol to the right of “Instructions” in the right margin of “World of O Maps” – and you get up a box with the link. You can use this to link to the maps in your area, the map for a competition, or whatever;)

Experimental feature: Bulk addition of maps using Excel file
I know from e-mail correspondence that many of you have a significant number of maps for your club (or even for your federation) which you would like to upload to “World of O Maps” in a more automatic way than just adding one map at a time using the interface. I am now providing an excel file format where you can fill in your maps, and send the Excel file to me using e-mail (later on an upload form will be provided if this service is used a lot). Some added benefits with this method

• You do not have to add location for the maps in the Excel-file. You can upload all maps without location, and use “World of O Maps” to position the maps afterwards. A Google Earth tool for positioning maps added using an Excel-file is also in the works.
• You can assign a unique ID to each map, such that later you can do updates simply by sending a new Excel file including updates of current maps + more maps.
• You can send map samples packed in a zip-file along with the excel-file (Note! Appropriate naming of the map samples is cruicial here!). Map names in the ZIP-file shall be “map_Sourceid.jpg”. For example, a map with sourceid BLR1 shall have name “map_BLR1.jpg”. You choose the sourceid for your maps in the Excel file.

This is an experimental service – but it is tested for some contributors already with success. You find the Excel file here. However, I will not be able to start processing the files sent until in January. Please send me the following:

1. Excel file.
2. Excel file exported as “Tab delimited text”
3. Zip-file with map samples if you like to.

I will soon get a list of all French maps to include into World of O Maps in this way, and there are also similar plans for Denmark. Federation wide additions is the best, but all contributions are welcome!

Google Earth integration
Google Earth is one of the coolest applications out there – and integration with Google Earth has been on the agenda for “World of O Maps” from the start. Until now, you have been able to open a map location in Google Earth for a single map using the link “Google Earth” for a map. Now you can test-drive two new features:

• Addition of maps using Google Earth to set the location. Fly to the map location in Google Earth, and when you stop, a small icon is set up. If you click the icon, you can add a map to World of O Maps at this location with all appropriate information using the web browser.
• Browse the World of O Maps database in Google Earth. Fly to some place in Google Earth, and stop. After a few seconds, the 30 newest maps within your viewport are shown. This function is not yet optimized, and the server load is currently quite high – so please don’t use it too much in this phase.

More Google Earth integration is planned for the future, including overlays of maps and a better map browsing function.

Small Note! Most of the Christmas time, I will not be online for confirming map additions and competition additions.