EarthBrowser
Current Version: 3.0.4 (May 30, 2008)
EarthBrowser (formerly Planet Earth) is a very cool program that displays a real-time picture of the earth that indicates cloud cover and day and night regions - as well as allowing you spin and zoom the globe in any which way you desire (you'll be sure to make your Geochron-owning friends mildly sick). In addition, it displays current weather conditions and 5-day forecasts for over 800 cities, making it a superb general-purpose weather program as well. It's Internet software merely because of how it gets its most valuable information (maps, current cloud cover, etc.) via the the Internet.
Version 3.0 added/changed the following:
- Rewritten using Adobe AIR.
- There is an integrated web browser right within EarthBrowser 3.0 now. That is huge and you won't really understand how easy it makes things until you browse some geo-websites and drag and drop KML links right into your placemarks folder or look at the Wikipedia page for a city or country.
- Weather Datasets - There are a lot of other nice features that you won't see in Google Earth or Microsoft's Virtual Earth. I've been creating a lot of real-time datasets generated from the NOAA Forecast Models to give regions of rainfall, snowfall, humidity, temperature and many other measurements which are all animated across the globe with an intuitive time slider. Continental US doppler radar, earthquakes, volcanoes, webcams and many more datasets are all there and animated too.
- KML Integration - KML support in EarthBrowser 3.0 is really nice and intuitive. There is a Panarimio KML file that allows you to see pictures from all over the world as you zoom in closer. You can download a KML or KMZ file directly within the embedded browser or drag and drop it from your desktop. EarthBrowser even has some extensions to the KML format that I felt were missing and greatly enhance the expressiveness of the format.
- KML Mashup Tool - EarthBrowser 3.0 has really been designed to be a KML authoring and mashup tool. If you want to save a single feature from a dataset, just drag a placemark icon from the globe right into your placemarks folder and it will make a copy. You can drag out any combination of items in your placemark folder onto a text editor to make a custom KML mashup file to post it on your own website or share it with your friends. Version 3.1 will extend EarthBrowser from your desktop to your website. It will be easy since it is based on Flash technology. A simple and seamless way of creating and distributing your personal or corporate geospatial content.
Version 3.0.4 makes the following additional changes:
- Bug Fix: Label Color
- Bug Fix: Maps Button
- Bug Fix: Sunrise/Sunset time fixed
- Bug Fix: Problem dragging urls onto window
- Bug Fix: Problem dragging placemarks
Upgrades from version 2.0 are discounted.
User Reviews
"EarthBrowser is a way cool example of what's next in Internet applications: special-purpose programs that focus on a specific kind of information, which they gather from sites across the net and integrate for you. Today's browsers are all about gathering information: which information you gather, and how you put it together is up to you. Earth Browser is all about the weather: you don't need to know it's using the Internet: it just does -- all you need is an interest in weather, earthquakes, volcanoes and the like. Earth Browser gathers raw data and images from public and private web sites around the world (including recent satellite cloud-cover images) and integrates them into a very nicely-rendered 3D view of current conditions around the world. Think of it as a personal version of your weatherman's workstation -- right down to those happy little animated icons for current conditions in selected cities. There are plenty of display and customization options, including which cities get those happy little icons at various zoom levels: show New York, LA, Paris and London in the big view, and Pittsburgh, Paga-Pago and Timbuktu in the close-ups. Clicking the weather icon for a city pops up a window showing current conditions and a five-day forecast. Clicking on the optional markers for recent volcanoes, earthquakes, and webcams (the only disappointment of the whole package was the small number of webcams shown) pops up special windows or opens a browser window to show more info. I'm not sure how many people will spend $20 to get rid of the annoying banner that floats across the screen periodically, but anyone who's interested in what a next-generation web-enabled application looks like -- or has a healthy curiosity about the world and the weather -- would be well rewarded by doing so."
—Dave Land
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to download the Adobe AIR version of EarthBrowser.Also See . . .
Can't find what you're looking for? Try a search:
Also, if you have an older Mac, be sure to check out the "Classic" applications page for more options.
Finally, take a look at ALEMIA if you think you know that name of an application, but aren't quite sure.
Also Consider . . .
These are applications that are newer and of potential interest, but which I haven't yet selected for permanent inclusion. Have a look, and let me know if you think they deserve to be part of the permanent collection!