Incredibly simple and at no cost (using the demo versions) you can create fantastic Geo-maps, location intelligence, heat maps etc.
My first step was to locate some publicly available and some interesting data (free of charge). Downloading the data was easy courtesy of www.aggdata.com who are data suppliers with a section Free-data-sets section of Aggdata. Of course I selected the most interesting data set which is Complete list of Nobel Prize winners. which I intended to geo-code and then map. Its a good list of interesting people from all over the globe and would present a nice challenge.
Typically one would expect to have to use a complex and expensive mapping tools to first geo code then map the list Nobel laureates. However there are simpler and accessible solutions available freely.
Download Mapcite which is availabe as an add-in for MS Excel. You can watch a little video on Mapcite. Follow the instructions by website to download and install the add-in. You must note that with Bing Maps you must have a Windows Live log-in. Most important is to obtain a BingMaps key to be used in the Mapcite. Should you have any difficulty, mail me for assistance.
Once Mapcite Add-in was installed, I set about geo-coding the location data of the birthplace of each of the Noble laurates. This is relatively simple using an interactive menu with drop-downs for you to identify the fields to match city,country or street address (if you have it). Here is link to the MS Excel data file with the geo coding completed. I hope you will enjoy filtering by year, type of prize and country and refreshing the map each time. In the coming weeks I am hoping to learn how to make this available online!
Below are some of the maps I generated from the Nobel Laureates birthplace list. You will note that I color coded the pins for each of the different categories of Nobel Prize. You can find out more about theNobel Prize and its history which includes Barack Obama as a winner.
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