Nick is an environmental engineering student at UC Berkeley, and has worked with a professor there to produce an app that allows you to take geo-location based notes, attach photos, and export the notes in a nice Google Earth KMZ format. The app is very simple and works well.
Evernote and other note-taking apps offer some geolocation features, but it is difficult to get those notes into Google Earth. With this app, it’s quite easy to write a note, snap a photo, and email the KMZ to anyone you’d like.
Here’s the result of one I just did:
While the app is simple and works well, there were a few oddities:
1 – When I saved it, I had a few choices on what to do with the KMZ file (email, etc), but “View it in Google Earth on Android” wasn’t one of them. That may be more of an issue with my setup than with the app, but it was surprising since the latest version of Google Earth on Android supports KML files.
2 – The photo shows up sideways in Google Earth.
3 – I had to take a new photo; couldn’t select one from my gallery instead.
4 – The pin is on my current location, and is accurate, but would be nice to choose an alternate location.
In any case, it’s a handy little app for $0.99, and could be very useful for some people depending on what they need to accomplish. You can find it on Google Play here. No word on an iOS version, but time will tell.
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.
I’m got interested to this new app by reading your post. There are more apps comes up beside google map. Also heard about iphones new geo-location app. Thanks buddy.
Hello! Thanks for your valuable feedback about our product. I’ll take it into account as I work on updates.
Our iOS app is actually quite well polished, and has been out for nearly a year now. You can check it out by looking up “FieldNotesLT” or “FieldNotesPro” on the iTunes app store. These apps allow you to move your location with the pin, and you can add photos from the gallery.
We wanted to bring our iOS app to Android users, which is why we built FieldNotesLT for Android. It’ll take us some time to catch up to our iOS version, but in the meantime you can check out our iOS version!