Monday, November 13, 2006

Automating Google Earth

A couple of months ago Craig Stanton discovered that Google Earth now had acquired Applescript support.

Applescript is amazingly useful, but scripting applications using it still requires some basic programming knowledge. Which is probably why Apple introduced Automator with the release of Tiger, which allows you to script your applications simply by dragging and dropping predefined actions into a workflow, no coding required.

CREDIT: Automator.us
Building a Google Earth workflow

So the next step is obviously to put together some automator actions for Google Earth, and that's now been done with two such actions; Go To Location and Save Screenshot, having been built around the Google Earth Applescript library and released as the Google Earth Action Pack (GEAP) on Automator.us.


Google Earth for Mac with Automator actions

As Ogle Earth points out this is perfect for building scripted tours with voice overs, although with the limitation that Automator has no easy way of playing prerecorded sound files, so at least for the moment you have to use a synthesised voice.

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