When users click on a point on the map, an info window appears with reference numbers and descriptions from 19th-century and modern-day researchers, links to data from government agencies and historical societies, and images of artifacts removed from barrows. The developers in the Google Maps forums were quick to answer my questions, such as when I needed help customizing pop-up boxes with information about each barrow. After that, I spent one evening per week, over six months, adding barrow descriptions and images to the Google Sheet. It only took two days for me to create the basic map using the Charts visualization. After some online searching, I discovered that I could use the Maps JavaScript API and the Google Charts “Map” visualization to pull the data from the spreadsheet, and I built the Stonehenge Barrow Map showing all the barrow locations. I thought somehow this data could be visualized on a map. This was frustrating, so I pulled together a Google Sheets listing the barrows’ latitudes and longitudes and the numbering systems used by different authorities. And, of course, there were no online sources that correlated and matched the barrow location data. If you tried now to find a barrow using 200-year-old guides, modern databases wouldn’t have the same reference numbers. Early 1800s researchers published excellent guides to the barrows, but there were no authoritative maps and surveys of the area in those days. In the countryside around Stonehenge, one challenge is finding barrows and identifying them against records and maps that were created over a 200-year period. It’s fascinating to imagine who the barrows’ inhabitants were-like the one with the intriguingly deformed skull-and what their lives were like thousands of years ago. When I can spare time away from my software business, I offer tours around this unique landscape and study the barrows myself. My journey into mapmaking started when I came across a 200-year-old reference to an oddly deformed, 5,500-year-old skull buried in one of the 300 Neolithic and Bronze Age barrows (burial mounds) found within walking distance of the Stonehenge prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England. Discover how you can start using Google Maps Platform to visualize your passion projects. With Google Maps Platform products and some help from the Google developer community, Banton built his map in just a few days, compiling the data and adding richer details in his spare time. Posted by Simon Banton, “Hengemaster,” Stonehenge Barrow MapĮditor’s note: Today’s post comes from Simon Banton: software professional, Stonehenge enthusiast, and creator of the Stonehenge Barrow Map. As the popularity of urban foraging grows, I hope that we can organize ourselves to cultivate increasingly more food-bearing (rather than just decorative) plants in our cities. Over half of the world’s population lives in urban areas: We want them to realize that there is edible bounty ready to be harvested, just down the street or around the corner. We’re excited that Falling Fruit is helping to reimagine cities as a source of food. Once you start looking for food-bearing plants in your city, you’ll realize that you’ve been surrounded by them all along. Tasks like converting between map coordinates and addresses now run automatically in the background, which frees up time that we can devote to other projects – like adding new features to the mobile app, importing new city tree inventories, and partnering with nonprofits with similar missions, such as Community Fruit Rescue. The APIs’ accurate documentation also helps us run Falling Fruit more efficiently. The Google Maps Platform credit covers the usage cost as we attract more users to Falling Fruit. With help from Google, we can continue to use the Maps APIs without stretching our small budget too thin. The interactive maps on our website and mobile apps are built using Google Maps Platform, helping us create the bridge between our users and the large amounts of data we collect on food-bearing trees, plants, and other foraging opportunities. We created Falling Fruit to help people recover food that would otherwise go to waste. But there is fresh food ready for picking on our city streets if you know where to find it. We don’t typically think of cities as places to forage for food. Falling Fruit was able to access Google Maps Platform through Google for Nonprofits to build its global map. Learn more about the products and resources available through Google for Nonprofits. Falling Fruit’s global map marks locations in 111 countries, and its website and mobile apps have been accessed by nearly 1 million people. Posted by Ethan Welty, Co-founder, Falling FruitĮditor’s note: Today’s post comes from Ethan Welty, Co-founder of Falling Fruit, a nonprofit that helps city dwellers harvest for food in their neighborhoods.
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