I wrote an article last week, entitled "Recording Longitudes
and Latitudes," in which I made a case for recording the longitude and
latitude of every location in your genealogy database. You can still read that
article here.
Reader Matthew Misbach wrote to me this week to describe something
he has been doing with map coordinates. Matt uses a GPS receiver as well as
online maps to record the latitude and longitude of some locations in his genealogy
database. He also publishes his data on a personal Web page.
Matt first uses his favorite genealogy program to create a GEDCOM
file of his database. He then converts the GEDCOM file to HTML format, suitable
for publishing on a website; for this step he uses GEDBrowser, a free utility
program that he wrote. The resulting Web pages contain links that point to a
map on MapQuest, which are automatically created from the latitude/longitude
information previously entered in the database. The person reading the Web page
can click on the link for a location to display a MapQuest map, complete with
a star in the center of the map denoting the location that Matt defined in his
genealogy database. Matt reports, "I have done NO manual editing of any
HTML pages; this was all automatically generated by GED Browser."
To get an idea of what Matt Misbach is doing, look at misbach.org/genealogy/g4255.html,
scroll down the page and then click on one of the locations shown at the very
bottom of that page. The two links on that page are for "Grave Location"
and for "House Location." Once the MapQuest page appears, you can
zoom in and out as you like to further identify the exact location.
Neat idea! My thanks to Matt Misbach for telling me about it.
You can contact Matt directly at: Matt@Misbach.org.
For more information about GEDBrowser, look at: www.misbach.org/gedbrowser/index.html.
Dick Eastman Online
