Findings

1. start  (entering town)

2. island (new group)

3. edge of town (towards starbucks)

4. center (new group) (towards market)

5. bottom (new group) ... pub [MARKET]

6. center (new group) (towards claire's)

7. drakes (new group) ... pub (food & drink)

8. walkway (towards university)

9. home (university) [END]

The colour fade in the center of the fields represent the business sector popularity via the amount of people in the groups.

To extract the KML data is difficult as google does not load up the individual KML files if you upload them onto the system,  however, if your phone is licenced or signed up (which the tutors was) you can grab all this information a lot faster and more precise. Luckily, I managed to load up the route and track the places we went, I then added a little graphical interface to show the user where the people was, how many people were there and how many different groups of people there was. Each group is represented by a colour and the lines in the colours show how many people were there. We left and it was one, turned into 2 at the roundabout and then 3 in the middle of town by claires accessories and starbucks then shrunk into 2's and a single to return to the university with. Also at number 5 is the market where shoppers like to grab a bargain, this is where we found the highest amount of people walk to before/after they have visited the town for food or shopping of some sort, everybody likes to grab a bargain!
Average time: 45 mins.

Doing this exercise has helped me to understand the social and business importance and usage in the area, it hasaided me in understanding what the most popular places ( for girls) in the town are and why this might be (the pubs locations may have had something to do with it), I would of liked to create a more throrough research into the area but due to the nature of the project and the route that we have already traced i dont believe that the outcome will be much different to the one that I have currently got. We did not ask the girls where they were going or why therefore my outcome is a prediction and may not be fully reliable but overall i am pleased with the learning outcome and i have learnt a lot from the exercise.

Below is a representation of the popular things (companys, schools, recreation) around the area we walked with line representations similar to the one at the beginning of the post but the lines represent how many people we was following at the time, this view makes it a look more easier to see and gives a real view of the area so you can imagine the usage and look of the area.

click to enlarge

Below is a picture of the automotive activity around the theatre and also around stonehouse, the main road seems to be union street as there was streams of traffic along this road and at its intersections, a few cars turned off down its sideroads and either continued down the road or turned to enter onto a different road off union street, possibly to miss traffic.

If the line is thick that means that there was a high amount of automotive activity, if it is low it means that there was minimal. Once again I have used a realistic areal view but I have left the companys names and street names on so that it can be referenced if need be.

KML

Today we were given hand held devices otherwise known as mobile phones to go on a route with substantial rules. We were told that our route would be planned for us and this is how:

On new mobile phones or in particular smart phones there is the capability of loading up google maps and using GPRS navigation technology pinpoint where you are at any moment in time and it will plan your route for as long as you are logged on.

Unfortunately, the mobile device I was given was broken so we worked in a group of 3 with one device and walked around the town depending on what rules we made up.

At first for some reason somebody wanted to follow a girl so we followed, later I suggested that we follow bigger groups of people for example follow a single person until a group of two come along and so on, this later stretched to groups carrying handbags and eventually ended up back where we started.

The KML file holds all this information and plots the route along the map. We have been asked to reproduce the map of where we went and the happenings and rules that we followed to come up with that route.

In my next post I will upload the route along with added information.

If you want to find out more about KML or google maps there is information available on the following website: GoogleMaps

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YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE KML FILE HERE USING MY UNIVERSITY EMAIL:

FILEHOSTING.ORG