Google+Map+Instructions

1. Collecting data from the Census. Go to the main page of the American FactFinder on the U.S. Census website: http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en • On the left hand side, scroll over “Data Sets” and then click on Decennial Census.” • For the “Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF 1) 100 -Data select “Detailed Tables.” • Under “Select a geographic type,” select “County Subdivision.” Under “Select a state,” select “Massachusetts.” Then select the desired county and then select one or multiple towns and cities to add. Highlight the desired towns or cities on your list below, then click “Next.” • On the next page, select the demographic categories that are desired by clicking on them, and then click “add.” When all of the desired categories are added, click “show results on the bottom right hand corner of the page. The page of results can than be used to copy and paste the data onto a spreadsheet. 2. Add geographical coordinates of the towns and cities to your spreadsheet. These can usually be found on Wikipedia. 3. Once all information is gathered onto your spreadsheet, start a new blank document that will contain the data in KML format. KML, or Keyhole Markup Language, is used to display information on Google Maps or Google Earth. For documentation on how to use it, go to the Google tutorial: http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kml_tut.html Copy and paste their sample code on how to use placemarks. Replace the information in between the tags with the relevant names and coordinates. Regular HTML tags can be used to make tables and adjust formatting for the demographic data. 4. Host the data in its KML format on an otherwise blank website. 5. Go to maps.google.com and copy and paste the URL of the KML webpage into it, and hit search. 6. Click “link.” A new box pops up with two options: Either use the “paste link in email or IM as a link to this webpage, or use the “Paste HTML to embed in website” to embed in your own webpage.