map a list

What are we talking about here? So let’s say you have a map that depicts all of the countries you have visited.   It’s one thing to have a pin in France and show “Paris, 2008” in the pop up bubble, but it would be a heck of a lot cooler if you could click on that pin and see an image of you next to the Eifel Tower. Alternatively, maybe you’re looking to provide some information about France to the person looking at the map.   The ability to integrate an IFrame into the pin pop up bubble makes it easy to show the user a fully functional website about French tourism when they click on the pin. If you followed the couple tutorials that talked about hyperlinks, e-mail and Skype this should be a piece of cake…   What does it look like from a spreadsheet perspective? Just like our last 2 tutorials, the key here is all in the way you enter data into your Google Spreadsheet.  Again, a bit of HTML is all you need.   Take a look at the second column in the spreadsheet titled Image. ...

What are we talking about here? Lots of folks use MapAList to share contact information above and beyond just physical addresses.  We see maps all the time that include email addresses and/or phone numbers in the pin pop up bubbles.  What you may not know is that it's easy to make those email addresses and phone numbers "active".  In other words, you can create your map such that someone looking at it can click on the values in the pin pop up bubbles to initiate an email or a phone call (via Skype).  This makes your map more way more interactive.  Let's take a look at how it's done... What does it look like from a spreadsheet perspective? Just like hyperlinks, the key here is all in the way you enter data into your Google Spreadsheet.  A little HTML does the trick.  Using "mailto" and "callto" make this a pretty straightforward process. Scroll to the right in the frame below and take a look a the third column in the spreadsheet titled E-mail Li...

What are we talking about here? The ability to visualize a list of addresses on a map is definitely useful - and it's what we're all about here at MapAList.  Leveraging hyperlinks within maps makes them even more interactive for you and your users.   In this first post about hyperlinks, the goal is to show you how to associate a link to a website with a pin on your map.  This will allow whomever is viewing your map to click on a pin and see hyperlinks in the bubble that pops up. Furthermore, it will enable the viewer to click on the hyperlinks to navigate to a URL directly from the map.  Sound cool?  It is.  Sound hard?  Don't worry, we'll walk you through it... What does it look like from a spreadsheet perspective? There are 2 approaches to making this work, one certainly more efficient if you are dealing with multiple address records. In the sample spreadsheet below, you can see a column called Site  which is used to associate the address with a website (URL).  You ca...

What are we talking about here? So basic grouping was, well, a bit basic wasn’t it? When I ran through it with my wife for the first time she was rather impatient and starting asking me why she couldn’t change the pin colors/styles. I explained that she could and that I would walk her through it in the advanced grouping tutorial. Advanced grouping enables a lot more than simply grouping based on distinct values in a column. With advanced grouping, MapAList supports the use of operators and comparison values to create grouping rules. It then allows you to choose the pin image associated with each group. Let me show you what I mean… What does it look like from a spreadsheet perspective? In the sample spreadsheet below (which should look familiar), you can see a column called Response   which is used to differentiate each address as coming to the wedding (Yes), not coming (No), or no response (Empty).   So let’s see what we get when we map this sheet… What does it look like from a ...

What are we talking about here? Creating basic maps that simply map all addresses are useful, but grouping allows you to kick things up a notch. Let’s say you are mapping your wedding attendee list for your wedding website and want to allow the map viewer to easily differentiate between the bride’s family and the groom’s family. MapAList has a Map Type built to handle just that – it’s called Group by Distinct Column Values (using unique pin images) and can be selected in Step 4 – Configure Map of the map creation process. This Map Type allows you to tell MapAList which column in your worksheet contains the grouping attribute. MapAList then examines the values in that column and assigns a unique pin image to each distinct value. Running with the wedding example, what this means is that you would need a column in your worksheet that associates each address with the bride or groom…let’s take a look at an example. What does it look like from a spreadsheet perspective? In the sample ...