Capturing interesting location based information and map in Google Earth

I have a few workflows used to maintain a running text file of locations visited and related activity. For example… Beer Log and a Food (Restaurant) Log. Each workflow captures different information but both end with adding event information to a Dropbox text file. I use these files for various things, but the most interesting is to populate a Google Earth map.

It’s quite fun to launch Google Earth and browse around the various restaurants I’ve visited.

You’ll see at the bottom of the post the format of the Dropbox .txt file is really simple. You can easily adapt this to other things you might want to display on a Google Earth view.

There are a variety of ways you can create the Dropbox file. I have both Workflow HQ workflows as well as Drafts Actions that I use. Both make it very easy to capture the information including your current location information (lat and lon). The workflows simply prompt for the data about the restaurant or the beer and then prepend to the appropriate Dropbox file.

My Drafts action for logging a new restaurant visit in the Dropbox file is super simple. Type the name of the restaurant and run this action. That’s it. The only changes you will need to make to this is the File Name and the Path in the Dropbox step. Point it to your text file for your food log.

I have other workflows to capture info, but the more interesting part is the mapping workflow.

This Workflow HQ Workflow parses the .txt file, wraps the appropriate KML around it and then launches Google Earth. Once in Google Earth you can view all of your mapped locations.

The only change you will need to make to the workflow is in the ‘Get File’ Action. Change the Dropbox File Path to the name and location of the text file for your food log.

Enjoy! As always, if any questions, please post. Always glad to assist where I can – jay

The format of the text file used for the food log is simply:
yyyymmdd;hhmm;lat;lon;restaurant_name;

For example here is a snippet of my Dropbox file:

20180701;0903;29.7339052142272;-95.418284528168;Picos Restaurant;
20180601;1924;34.86717257456073;-84.32311997397639;Harvest on Main;
20180519;1932;35.89946556648133;-78.76364720172435;The Angus Barn;
20180317;1002;36.08054161265977;-79.50604752339649;NC Jelly Donuts;
20180309;1313;36.02251954242882;-115.0845818881237;P.F. Chang’s;
20150531;1520;52.3791;4.886309;Winkel 43;
20150530;1700;52.36919;4.888953;Kantjil & de Tijger;
20150529;1745;48.84842;2.33167;Clasico Argentino;

My beer log is a bit more elaborate to include other data about the beer including rating, notes, etc.

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