Geek heaven: A wiz-bang geo-coded map - and a news source, too

Corro Moseley's (aka David Burden; rez: September 11, 2004) Google Earth API has been applied in interesting ways in the past, but now he has teamed up with Ian Pahute (aka Ian Upton; rez: October 30, 2006) to create a geo-coded map within Second Life® that enables you to explore a scaled 3D version of Birmingham, UK in-world, access geo-tagged BBC and CNN World News, and more.

I recently spent an entertaining and informative half-hour in the company of Pavig Lok and LittleToe Bartlett playing with this toy, and the verdict is... this is very cool, indeed.

Teleport directly from here. The first thing you have to do is activate your media player, and all becomes apparent.


It is a news source: touch the geocoded red pins at different locations on the world map and it opens a web page to live news from CNN, the BBC and Al Jazeera about that place or from that place


Walk through a flat map of Birmingham, UK


...then, walk through a 3D (Google Earth) map of Birmingham


Stand amidst several panoramic views of areas of Birmingham


The brain of this enterprise is this Map Controller: You can control Google Earth by touching the icons, command the hub cover settings and fog wall by clicking the controls, zoom in and out, reset to World View, toggle satellite and map views...

In addition, you can participate in a quiz, issue text chat commands to find cities, and even add your own geo-coded RSS feeds for map pin visualisation.

Didn't I tell you this was geeky? Cool geeky.