Exporting Smallworld Data to KML

There was a recent question on the sw-gis Yahoo group asking about how to export a Smallworld trail to KML for use in other applications. It turns out that can be done easily using the open source Magik Components Library (mclib). The following video demonstrates how this is done. Important information:
- Magik Components Library link is here
- Thanks to Brad Sileo (iFactor Consulting) for contributing this code to the MCLIB project.



Give it a try and let me know what kind of cool export applications you are using. And if you have any improvements to make to the functionality, please feel free to contribute to MCLIB.

[slightly off topic] Google Maps of Boulder Bike Paths

This is not Smallworld-related but is of interest to me. Every since I moved to Boulder (Colorado, USA) in March, I have been amazed by the number of bicycle paths in the city. Apparently the city will even plow the snow off the paths after a snow storm.

As a new resident of this fair city, I have often wondered how I can get to my destination using the available bike path network. The city provides some great paper and pdf network maps and even plans to create a bike-route-finding website (aka on-the-fly directions for cyclists) later this year. But I think there is still a need for integrating the network maps with a web search engine like Google Maps. Well, Google has recently implemented Google My Maps and I have started using that freely-available tool to start building an overlay on Google Map search results. You can read about it and see the current state of the project at the Cycling in Boulder blog.

If you are interested in contributing to the data in Boulder, please let me know. And if you are interested in doing something for a bike path network in your town that would be great, too! I have two ultimate goals:

• get people onto their bikes
• have a large enough interest in something like this that Google takes note and introduces searchable/traceable bike path networks into their Google Maps data.