Google's installable maps software Google Earth makes KML overlay files that add points of interest, descriptions and photos to your earth, and now you can view those KML files live on the web at ...

Google Earth users can now search publicly available Keyhole Markup Language (KML) data files, also known as map layers.

KML, which is the language used to describe layers and placemarks in Google Earth, is not an especially difficult language (it's just XML really) but it can be tedious to create and maintain.

On your second computer, just double-click the KML file in your cloud folder. It will open Earth with all of your placemarks. This isn’t a perfect solution.

The spread of that information has already extended to Google competitor Microsoft Virtual Earth, which has started to include KML files in Live Search Maps.

But, Google has been gradually releasing more support, so hopefully these limitations will get fixed in the future. Google Earth itself is probably the easiest application to create many KML files.

In the new Discovery Channel National Parks placemark collection I noticed they had colored description bubbles in Google Earth. So, I set out to figure out how they did it in the KML. It turns ...

A quick trick for viewing a KML map file directly in Google Maps without downloading it or opening Google Earth.