Google Earth Sounds + World Wind Fly thru demo

Haven't blogged for ages - sorry! Been very busy with work and endless PERL to do with my dissertation. Should have some stuff to show off with that in the next few weeks.. but in the meantime, I came across a cool news story, and a very nice JAVA world wind demo.

First up is the New Scientist story about a company called wild sanctuary who are working on software to embed these sound files into the relevant locations in Google Earth. The man behind it all, Bernie Krause, has got over 3500 hours of sound recordings from all over the world, taken over 40 years.

Krause plans to have the software ready with 26 sounds for demonstration at the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose, California, on 29 May.

The obvious question is whether users would be able to add their own sounds, and apparently work is underway on a project called Freesound. In any case, fantastic use of sound to create an immersive website, where so many have failed in the past (remember the dreadfull embedded Midi files?).

Next up the New Look The Earth is Square has links and screenshots for a World Wind JAVA demo, created by a company called DiSTI. I've been frustrated all day at uni trying to get it to work, and although I can get the fighter jet to appear, I don't get any of the landscapes. Not sure what the problem is (I presume port blocking), but now that I'm home, I've really enjoyed flying over real life locations (even if they are limited to a choice of around 5 or 6 at present). So nip over to Earth is Square for a preview, or jump straight in through this link.