Geolove

So you can probably tell that I have a mega soft spot for Google Earth - years ago I spent a lot of brainpower on the whole annotated reality thing, and all I have to show for it are geocode.net/.org registrations, and a whole slew of project folders. But now Google Earth's network link does it better than I could've imagined, so these days I sort of sit at the computer with dad and dribble over the latest data layers instead.

Today we blew our stacks when we found Placeopedia, a Google Maps / Earth 'interface' to Wikipedia (KML link described on the 'data' page), then giggled with glee as we added live Australian weather radar and not-so-live global cloud coverage.

On a related note, if your interest is more upwards, you'd probably like Celestia - it's like Google Earth for the universe. Just make sure you go to max stars visible, then auto-magnitude and star shape set to 'disc' .. then zoom out biglots. Heavenly.

The sad thing is, I used to be a Keyhole subscriber before Google bought them and turned it into Google Earth, even back then it had KML, but I never put two and two together and foresaw this greatness. I'm so lame.

Visa application interview on Monday. Exciting!