Our world

On the radio earlier ths month, there was talk of a mapping system for showing short-term earthquake risk in California. Needless to say, it is accurate ( almost always right ), but not too useful (it is only wrong when there is an earthquake).

We are getting to the point where there is a huge amount of 'real-world' data available on the web. Examples include:

air quality monitoring
ocean currents
world-wide siesmic events
satellite & aerial photography
power outages

Various efforts to merge all this together include
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/
http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/index.html
http://www.keyhole.com/
http://maps.google.com/