Interactive Tour 2.1 – New Features
Last Saturday the Losing Georgia: Interactive Tour 2.1 was released with much needed improvements and features that have been the work of a few tireless nights. The biggest improvement was the implementation of using the Network Link feature in Google Earth.
Users are now able to download one small KMZ file (367 bytes), activate the link and view the Tour off the Losing Georgia server. Whenever there is an update, the user just has to refresh the Network Link to download the latest information. This eliminates the downloading of a new file every time there is an update.
The Community Places Tour was integrated into the Interactive Tour to make access to information easier without downloading separate files. The Network Link feature made this addition possible. Now there are four main folders in which the Interactive Tour is broken down: Development, History, Community, and Government.
A much needed feature since the release of overlays was limiting the view of one overlay at a time. This problem has been solved by having the contents of overlay subfolders to be options, rather than acting like placemarks. Now only one overlay can be viewed at a time in a subfolder. Also a “Turn Off Map” option has been included in each subfolder to turn off an active overlay.
With overlays in mind, thirteen historical maps of Georgia, from 1831 to 1897, have been added from the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection using a Creative Commons License. Each map is a snippet which includes Douglas, Paulding, Haralson, Carroll Counties and more. The Losing Georgia Project does not profit from the use of the historical maps. The maps are intended for research and historical purposes.
The use of Georgia’s historical maps has led to defining twenty three communities throughout Douglas County. Many are communities that no longer exist, but users are able to discover these “lost” communities that once served many families in the past.
