Fresh RSS World: Featured Blog

Skim News South African and International RSS Feeds and Podcast s

Follow the Google Earth Blog in Skim Here

Extract from the RSS Feed...

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:32:47 -0500

In a promotion for the latest Lara Croft game "Tomb Raider Underworld", Atari is running a contest called the Tomb Raider Challenge Google Earth Plugin Required. You must have GE plugin installed. (GE Plugin - Windows only, and Adobe plugins required) with the opportunity over the next few days for a lucky someone to win a Sony PS3. The fun part is that it uses the Google Earth Plugin to play the game. Basically, you visit the site and are presented each day with a clue. You then have to hunt on the Earth to find the location provided by the clue. If you guess right, after you zoom in close enough, you will see an orange Tomb Raider icon. When you see that, you've found the answer! Click on it and you will be congratulated on deciphering the clue, and can submit your name and E-mail to see if you were first. There is also a bigger "Major Challenge" where you can win a trip around the world, a big screen TV, and a lot of other goodies.

NOTE: At least on my computer it takes quite a while for this web site to load up (over a minute). Once it does load, you have to close the video of "Lara Croft" ("X" button in the lower right) to see the underlying Google Earth plugin and today's challenge.

There's an extensive forum thread all about this challenge at the Tomb Raider Forums. Some people are posting hints on each day's clues. There was also discussion in the thread that apparently the contest is only for folks in New Zealand or Australia. But, I haven't verified that yet.

Vendee Globe in Google Earth

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:14:16 -0500

It used to be very difficult to follow the drama of an around-the-world-sailing race. But, the Internet changed all that. One of my all time favorite Internet experiences was following the 2000-2001 Vendee Globe solo non-stop round-the-world race. The shining star of that race was a young 20-something Ellen MacArthur from the UK who managed to take second place in a very dramatic race. Ellen was later awarded an MBE for services to sport - so she's now Dame Ellen MacArthur. Being able to follow the racers' positions on a map and read daily updates and even see pictures and video from solo competitors at sea was a revolution in the sport of round-the-world sailing races. But, the story of Ellen's race was especially captivating.

The Vendee Globe is only held every four years. On November 9th, 2008 the current race began from Les Sables d'Olonne, France. The competitors are currently in the southern Atlantic Ocean and is a very close race so far. Since the last race was held in 2004-2005, this is the first time the Vendee Globe has been held since Google Earth was released. When the race started I was disappointed to find there was no published KML file for viewing the race in Google Earth. They do have a web based map and race tracker.

Fortunately, some enterprising French programmer has created some KML for following the race in Google Earth. You can visit his web site here (french). Here is a link to download the current positions of the racers Google Earth File. You must have GE installed. . Alternatively, I've created a Vendee Globe network link which will automatically load his file and refresh every 6 hours so you can keep the file handy for putting in your My Places in Google Earth.

The data for the Vendee Globe racer positions is available in spreadsheet files at the Vendee Globe rankings page.