www.itowler.com

The other day I found another feature of Google Maps.  You can Use Google Maps to find Latitude and Longitude (Lat / Long) of a point, and its pretty easy.  This is a great feature that can be used to add Lat / Long information to your gedcom file.  The software that I use (PGV) has a Google Maps module built into it, so this feature is not as important to me, but other may find it interesting.

To find the Lat / Long of a point here is what you need to do:

1. Open your favorite web browser (Firefox, or Internet Explorer, etc..) and go to google maps (http://maps.google.com)
2. Find the point of interest that you want the Lat / Long for.
3. Using your mouse, right click above the point and you should get a little screen that looks like the picture on the right.
4. You can see that there is now a new box that has several options, choose the last option which says "Center Map Here"
5. Now that you have centered the map on your point of interest, you need to copy and paste the following into the address bar of your Browser:

   javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

6. The Lat / Long will be displayed in a new box on top of the screen.  You can cut and paste these into your Genealogy Program.

This is a useful tool, but it only really works with your point of interest centered.  If you do not center the map (steps 3 and 4 above) it will not give you the best Lat / Long point.  This only gives you the Lat / Long for the center of the map so....

There are several websites that have taken this little trick and turned it into a more useful solution, where all you have to do is navigate to your point of interest, and the Lat  / Long are displayed below.  One of the easiset websites that I found to do that was:

http://mapki.com/getLonLat.php

Next time that you need to find Lat / Long for somewhere keep this in mind.