Learn More
April 17, 2007 by John Krygier
The resources in this blog and the information in the Making Maps book are a great way to learn about making maps, but personal consultation and workshops are a great way to learn a lot about making maps in a short amount of time, in the context of your particular project and needs.
I have taught cartography and GIS for years, designed and created hundreds of maps (including most in the Making Maps book), conducted workshops, and consulted on many map design projects. I am available for consultation as well as workshops on cartography and map design, just contact me at jbkrygier@owu.edu
I have made beautiful crime maps using MapInfo for years and now I am charmed by showing buildings and cars on streets that Google provides. But I cannot seem to get my dots on the map without putting each one on individually. Can you kindly give me some guidance. I have google earth plus and of course i have google maps. I have no latitude or longitude data. Police Officers do not know what those mean and have no access to that information when they write a report. I think that MapInfo may provide that information but I am not certain. Thank you very much.
ps. once I know how to do something I can be quite creative but without the initial link, the forest is very dark. Megan
Both Google Maps and Google Earth need latitude/longitude to plot points. The file format both use is KML (or, if compressed KMZ).
If you have your crime locations plotted out in MapInfo, figure out if you can export to KML or KMZ format. I don’t know MapInfo, but other software packages now provide KML export, or there are free or low cost utilities which generate KML files. You can then open them in Google Earth or Maps.
Another route to getting lat/long is to use street addresses, if that information is included in the police reports. I have my students do this using a web site called BatchGeoCode.
Go to the URL below (a class exercise) and scroll down to the “BatchGeoCode.com” section for step by step instructions.
http://go.owu.edu/~jbkrygie/krygier_html/geog_222/geog_222_exer/04_222_exer04.html
I hope one of these two options work!
John K.