Well, it took longer than I had hoped to go through and update all the photos involved, but I’m pleased to announce that the Ka’anapali Beachwalk – Photo Tour is now online.
This photo tour is a combination photo slide show, Google Map tour that features photos we’ve taken from up and down the Ka’anapali Beachwalk along side points plotted on a satellite view Google Map. As you scroll through the photos, the map moves with you to see exactly where it was taken. Pretty sweet.
What made this page fun to create (for me at least) was the technology involved. It started with planning before our most recent Maui trip in September. I purchased a Travel GPS Recorder at Amazon, which not only connected to my PDA via Bluetooth to use as a navigation device (finding those beaches north of Ka’anapali) but also logged our travels. By synchronizing the clock on the GPS recorder and our digital cameras, we could use software to combine both photos and GPS waypoints to place our photos right on the map.
I was able to export that GPS data into a web friendly format, and with some back-end scripting was able to put this page together for the world to see. Since our photos for this site are hosted on Flickr, you can also use their mapping technology to browse these photos as well. Here’s a link to the photos at Flickr with their map loaded.
So, if you’ve been to Maui and walked down this beachwalk, hopefully some of these photos and the addition of the satellite views bring back some familiar memories. If you’re counting the days to your first visit to the Ka’anapali area, take a peek and see what you can expect.
