Sharing Place Information
The section describes how you can share placemarks, shapes and folder data with other people - including both users and non-users of Google Earth. You can share your place data by:
Note - You can also share place information with other Google Earth users via the Google Earth Community BBS website. For more information, see Sharing a Point of Interest.
Emailing an Image
At this time, emailing a Google Earth image on the Mac is only available through the Mail, Entourage and Eudora applications. You can email the current view of the Earth shown in the Google Earth 3D viewer as:
- An image file for people who don't have Google Earth
- A KMZ file for other users of Google Earth
When you email an image, a JPEG file is automatically attached to an outbound email message. When you email the view as a KMZ, a KMZ file is automatically attached to an outbound email message. To email an image:
- Complete one of the following:
- Click File > Email > Email Image.
- Type Ctrl+Alt+E (Windows and Linux only)
- Click the email icon
on the toolbar and choose Email Image.
- In the Select Email Service window, choose your default email programme or your Google Mail account. If you use your Google Mail account, you will be prompted to sign in if you have not already.
Before selecting your email service, select the Remember this setting... checkbox if you want to use the same email service every time you email a view. You can always change your email preferences later by selecting Tools > Options > General (Windows/Linux) or Google Earth > Preferences (Mac) and clicking the General tab.
- Wait while the Google Earth software sends the data to your email application. A new email window appears with the image file. (This can take a few seconds.) The image is a JPG file of the current view in the 3D viewer.
- Fill in the recipient's email address and any other information in the body and send the email.
When you email an image, the quality of that image is identical to the quality available for the Save Image feature in Google Earth.
Emailing Place Data
Note - On the Mac, you can only email through the Mail, Eudora and Entourage applications.
In addition to emailing a view as a KMZ file to other users of Google Earth, you also can email place data in two other ways:
- Attach a KMZ file or folder saved to your computer's hard drive to an email. If you followed the instructions listed in Saving Place Data, locate your saved KMZ file and attach it to an outbound email as you would with any attachment.
- Email a placemark that is centred in your 3D viewer directly from Google Earth (see below).
To email place data:
- Complete one of the following:
- Click File > Email > Email Place .
- Type Ctrl + E (
+ E on the Mac)
- Click the email icon on the toolbar and choose Email Place.
- Right-click (CTRL-click on the Mac) the appropriate placemark in the Places panel and choose Email.
- In the Select Email Service window, choose your default email programme or your Google Mail account. If you use your Google Mail account, you will be prompted to sign in if you have not already.
Before selecting your email service, select the Remember this setting... checkbox if you want to use the same email service every time you email a view. You can always change your email preferences later by selecting Tools > Options > General (Windows/Linux) or Google Earth > Preferences (Mac) and clicking the General tab. Wait while the Google Earth software sends the data to your email application. A new email window appears with the KMZ file. (This can take a few seconds.)
- Fill in the recipient's email address and any other information in the body and send the email.
Things to consider:
- When you email KMZ files that reference custom icons or image overlays from your local file system, those items are included with the placemark data. For this reason, KMZ files that include imagery overlays might be larger than those containing a simple placemark.
- If you are sending a placemark file to a user of a Google Earth (Keyhole) client version 2.2 or lower, the recipient will not be able to view the placemark. The file format for placemarks has changed for Google Earth versions 3.0 and higher. Send an image file instead.
Troubleshooting Email Issues
Note - On the Mac, you can only email through the Mail, Eudora and Entourage applications.
If your email application does not respond to the Email View command, you may need to set the default email programme. To do this in Windows, open the Control Panel from the Start menu and select Internet Options. Click the Programs tab, select the default email programme that you use from the Email drop-down list and click Apply. You should now be able to send a view with your email application. To do this on a Mac, open Mail. Click Mail > Preferences. Pick the email application that you'd prefer to have as your default email handler.
Sharing Data Over a Network
In addition to saving placemarks or folders to your local computer, you can also save place data to a web server or network server. Other Google Earth users who have access to the server can then use the data. As with other documents, you can create links or references to KMZ files for easy access. Storing a placemark file on the network or on a web server offers the following advantages:
- Accessibility - If your place data is stored on a network or the web, you can access it from any computer anywhere, provided the location is either publicly available or you have login access.
- Ease in Distribution - You can develop an extensive presentation folder for Google Earth software and make that presentation available to everyone who has access to your network storage location or web server. This is more convenient than sending the data via email when you want to make it persistently available to a large number of people.
- Automatic Updates/Network Link Access - Any new information or changes that you make to network-based KMZ information is automatically available to all users who access the KML data via a network link.
- Backup - If for some reason the data on your local computer is corrupt or lost, you can open any of the KMZ files that you have saved to a network location and if desired, save it as a local file again.
Note: Before you can create a network link to an item in Google Earth, you must store that place data on a server first.
This section covers the following topics:
Saving Data to a Server
To make your placemarks or folders available to other people via a server, you need to save the file to the appropriate location first.
- Network Server - To save a folder or placemark to a location on your network, simply follow the steps in Saving Place Data and save the file in a location on your company network rather than to your local file system.
- Web Server - To save a placemark or folder to a web server, save the file to your local computer first as described in Saving Place Data. Once the file is saved on your local computer as a separate KMZ file, you can use an FTP or similar utility to transfer the file to the web servers.
If you want users to be able to open KML and KMZ files from a web server, you may need to add MIME types for the server. These are:
- application/vnd.google-earth.kml+xml kml
- application/vnd.google-earth.kmz kmz
Opening Data from a Network Server
If you are working in an organisation where place data is saved to a network that you have access to, you can open that data in the same way you would open a saved KMZ file on your local computer.
- From the File menu, select Open (Ctrl + O in Windows/Linux, + O on the Mac) - Navigate to your network places and locate the KMZ or KML data that you want to open in Google Earth. Select the file and click the Open button. The folder or placemark appears in the Places panel and the 3D viewer flies to the view set for the folder or placemark (if any).
Files opened in this way are NOT automatically saved for the next time you use Google Earth. If you want the placemark or folder to appear the next time that you use Google Earth, drag the item to your My Places folder to save it for the next session.
- Locate the file that you want to open - Once you have located the file on your network places, you can simply drag and drop the KMZ file over the Places panel. The 3D viewer flies to the view set for the folder or placemark (if any).
When you use the drag-and-drop method of opening a placemark or folder, you can drop the item over a specific folder in the Places panel. If the My Places folder is closed and you want to drop it there, just hold the item over the My Places folder until the folder opens up and you can then place the item within subfolders or in the list. Items dropped in the My Places folder appear the next time you start Google Earth. Otherwise, you can drop the item in the white space below the Places panel so that it appears in the Temporary Places folder. Items opened this way only appear for the current session of Google Earth unless you save them.
About Network Links
The network link feature in Google Earth provides a way for multiple clients to view the same network-based or web-based KMZ data and automatically see any changes to the content as those changes are made. A network link allows for content publishing in a manner similar to web page/web browser content delivery:
- A network link provides a way to deliver dynamic data to multiple Google Earth users. When users connect to your KMZ file via a network link, either you or they can specify how often the data in the file is to be refreshed. This way, regular updates made to the content by one person are automatically reflected in all connected clients.
- A network link is intended as a view-only reference to published content. Just as web pages are viewed by many people but can only be modified by those with permission, place data content can be linked to and seen by multiple users while also being set to modifiable only by one author. As with web pages, users who are viewing the content can always save that content to their hard drive, but they can only receive dynamic content via a network link.
The following figure illustrates the parallels between web-based content and KMZ content via a network link using Google Earth.
Creating a Network Link
Before you can create a network link, the content that you want to link to must exist on the network or web server that you are linking to. If you are authoring the content, see Saving Data to a Server for details about saving KMZ files to a web or network server. If you are only linking to the content, make sure that you know either the network location of the file or the URL if it is located on a web server.
- Choose any one of the following ways to start:
- Select Network Link From the Add Menu. Select Network Link from the pop-up menu.
- Right-click (CTRL-click on the Mac) a folder in the My Places Panel. Select Add > Network Link from the pop-up menu. When you add a network link in this way, the selected folder is automatically set as the container for the network link.
The New Network Link dialogue box appears. Enter the name of your link in the Name field. Enter the full path of the KMZ file in the Link field, or browse to the file location if the file is located on a network. You can use a URL to reference the KMZ, such as http://www.test.co.uk/myKMZ.kmz. The 3D viewer immediately flies to the default view for the linked data.
- Enter descriptive text or HTML. You can enter this data in the same way you would for a normal folder. See Editing Places and Folders for more information.
- (Optional) Click the View tab to change the default view that this network link presents to users. Click Snapshot current view to use your current view in Google Earth. If your network link has more than one placemark, click Reset to display all these placemarks to users.
Note - The text that you enter in this description is your description of the link only, it cannot be viewed by anyone else linking to the KMZ file. Only you will be able to see the description that you enter here (unless you email your link folder to other people). This is similar to creating a bookmark for a web page and then adding a descriptive note about the bookmark.
