Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Convert My Maps to the Google Maps API

Map Channels Feed Converter

Map Channels, the popular map creation website, has released a new utility to convert map data feeds from one format to another. The utility can convert tab-delimited text to KML or KML to tab-delimited text. The application is very useful if you want, for example, to extract data from a Google My Map that you have created.

The feed converter let's you convert the data from a My Map KML to tab-delimited text which you can then edit in a spreadsheet. To grab the KML from a My Map right click on the 'View in Google Earth' button in Google Maps and copy the URL. Next paste the URL address into your browser and change the part in the address that says 'output=nl' to 'output=kml'. Then save the KML to your computer.



Now you can just paste the KML code into the Map Channels Map Feed Converter and convert it into tab-delimited text and save the data to a spreadsheet. This means you can take the data from a My Map you have created and use the same data in a Google Maps mashup using the Google Maps API. Very cool!

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