At home in Google Earth Page 2 of 2

Build a 3-D model in SketchUp and add it to Google’s world map

More fun with Google Earth

Google Earth was designed to accept data from third parties, which means that lots of ingenious developers have been building their own Google Earth-linked add-ons. These are among my favorites:

Earth Addresser, a clever tool by earthlingsoft (free), looks up all of the addresses in your Address Book, figures out where they should appear on Google Earth, and then spits out a .kmz file that you can share with others. The developers acknowledge that you might want to consider the privacy issues of using Earth Addresser, since it involves sending all (or some) of your contacts’ details off to Google, unencrypted.

Barnabu.co.uk’s Live Global Clouds is a very cool Google Earth add-on that displays nearly real-time weather data (it’s delayed by a few hours). Just download it, select File: Open, and choose that file; this should add it to your Places list.

You can view selections from the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection as overlays within Google Earth. In the View section of the sidebar, select All Layers from the drop-down menu. Next, open the Featured Content subsection; then open the Rumsey Historical Maps section within that. Select a map from the list. You don’t get the same detail that modern satellite imaging brings, but it’s fascinating to step back in time and see how your hometown once looked. If you have time, you should poke around in the Featured Content layer; there’s plenty of fascinating stuff in there.

[ Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer based in England and a frequent contributor to O’Reilly Media’s MacDevCenter. ]