Within days of Google adding a timeline to its Earth, four of the most impressive KML creation tools all have time tag support:
- GPSVisualizer, Adam Schneider’s free but crazily feature-rich web-based converter of GPS data to KML (and much more besides), has added the option to “Add time stamps, if possible” to the upload form.
- GPSBabel 1.3.1, an open source application for PC, Mac and Linux that takes GPS data and converts it to KML (and many other formats), “should build these tags for you automatically on download”, according to project lead Robert Lipe.
- KMLer 1.4, Valery Hronusov’s ArcGIS 9 extension that gives you all kinds of options for exporting to KML (and importing from KML), can now also create <TimeSpan>,<TimeStamp> and <When> tags from ArcGIS layer attributes. Cost: $20-$50, depending on the version. There’s a free 7-day trial.
- Arc2Earth, Brian Flood and his team’s ArcGIS 9 extension for exporting to (and importing from) KML, now has a comprehensive new time data tab that lets you fine-tune your time-enabled KML. Brian has posted a walkthrough of the functionality, including some examples, such as US states, time-stamped by date of accession. Cost: $100-$300, depending on the version. There’s a free 30-day trial.
Have I missed any? (It goes without saying that Google Earth Plus and Pro’s GPS importer also produce time stamps.)
http://www.magnalox.net has it too.
I’d add that GPS Visualizer also now has the ability to render tracks in Google Earth as both linear paths AND as waypoints (the form option is “Draw as waypoints”). The generated points are clickable and show info about each trackpoint, and the names of the points are configurable: name them by number, time stamp, or whatever you’ve colorized by (e.g., altitude or speed).