Out Of The Earth Comes Gedcom

Part I

Its here! Well almost here... I just got an email from a Johann Robette at GeoGed.com . Its apparently a new startup site that has come up with a way to convert GEDCOM files to work with Google Earth! Their initial launch is FREE! From his site it says;

GeoGed.com, genealogical cartography

"Created by a passionated genealogist and programmer, GeoGed is a free service enabling you to create precised and detailed maps of your own genealogy."

"Up to now, it only deals with some European countries (UK, BE, LU, NL, DE, ES, IT, FR). It has just finish being beta-tested and is in phase of communication." [per Johann]

I have done some testing of this, using a US based GEDCOM file, and provide you an inside look on how it works for this purpose. I will also provide a critique along the way. Please realize this is JUST an initial launch, and I hope it will soon fully support US based Gedcom files.

To begin with you need to go to www.GeoGed.com and click on the British flag in the upper right corner to translate the site to British English, otherwise its French. Then notice the "Subscribe" button on the navigation bar (next to "Home"). Click on this and create an account. After you have created an account login to the site.

Then you will see some verbiage about "How does it work?". There is a link in this paragraph called "cartography module", click on this. You will then see the following>>

Click on the Browse button and select "your" Gedcom file on your computer. Please note, based upon my initial testing of this a large Gedcom file may be a problem. I waited about 20 minutes for a Gedcom file that was about 450Kb in size, and it still was processing it, so I abandoned that. This is no longer an issue {edit 10/24/06 - ghodges)

If your Family History program has an option to Export a portion of your Gedcom then I would suggest, at this time, to only include just one Paternal and or Maternal lines or maybe only 3 generations. In my test this generated about a 4kb Gedcom file, which went really quick on GeoGed.com. In my example it derived 10 different place-names.

Then select "United States" from the "Default Country" list.

After that select the "Validate" button. Your screen will change and you will see the following>>

After its complete it will show something like this>>

Notice, to the left, it found a place name entry from my Gedcom file for "South Bend, Indiana". At first the "Zip-code" box will be blank. This is where, currently, it has some drawbacks, but as I have noted this software does not fully support US locations. I hope to see this soon.

Anyway, the easiest way to deal with this is go to "Google Search" and type in the following, "zip code South Bend, Indiana" in a separate Browser window. You should see in the results, somewhere, a zip code that you can copy/paste into this field on GeoGed.com. You can come back to the Search window again and just replace the City/State in the search field. This all may seem tedious, but when you see the results, in Google Earth, you will be very impressed, as I will show you later on in this post.

After you have "pasted" in the zip code select "Search" you will see something like this>>

Next it will automatically insert the proper City. You will need to do this with the entire list that is generated from the import of your Gedcom file.

After identifying the 10 different place-names, in my example, you then need to select the "Validate" button. Another good feature throughout this process is you can use the "Back" button to make any desired adjustments. After selecting "Validate" you will see the following...<see Part 2>

Comments

[Gary Hodges]

I have re-tested a 450Kb Gedcom file and am happy to say its working! Not sure what it was, but its fine now. For those that may be waiting to test GeoGed.com, now is a good time.