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EarthBrowser is an Earth simulation application that combines a 3 dimensional globe animation that is constantly monitoring conditions around the globe with real-time weather conditions and 5 day forecasts, as well as live earthquake info, webcam images, volcanoes and current cloud formations. A screen saver option lets it take over your desktop when you are away from your computer. 
I’ve been checking out Earth Browser, and it’s both stunningly attractive and quite cool feature-wise, but the streamed information features are not well-suited to my slow, 26,400 dialup Internet connection. This application must rock on broadband. Features in brief: 
EarthBrowser shows you what parts of the world are in daylight or darkness. You can instantly see where the sun is rising and setting. There is also an option to turn off the night shadow which enables you to veiw the earth in total light. You can also animate the night shadow to see an accelerated view of the day passing, or a seasonal change by noticing how the polar regions shift from complete darkness to light. 
There are six types of dynamic data that EarthBrowser displays. Weather conditions and forecasts, clouds, webcams, earthquakes, volcanoes, and night shadows are all updated regularly and displayed on the globe. With the exception of clouds and shadows, information is displayed as an icon that hovers over the location that the information relates to. Clicking an icon will bring up more detailed information. 
The tools window hovers above the main window and gives you control over many EarthBrowser features. There are ten buttons in the tools window, four of which allow you to control your view of the Earth and six that toggle the display of information overlays. If your connection supports it, Earth Browser gives you a unique way of seeing the constantly changing weather worldwide. You can look at the globe from a distance to see general weather patterns or you can zoom in for a closeup on your favorite region. With the clouds option engaged, you can look at the globe from a distance to see general weather patterns. Or disengage the clouds option to see a clear view of weather conditions accross the Earth. There is also an option to view hourly updated weather conditions and five day forecasts for over 800 cities worldwide. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful in getting the Clouds or Weather features to respond at all, presumably due to my slow connection. 
The way they are supposed to work is that the forecast window displays the current temperature, wind speed and direction, humidity and pressure, it also includes a 5 day forecast. More weather icons will become visible as you zoom in closer and then disappear as you zoom out. You can control the level at which an icon displays in the City List Window. The forecast window will also display the time at which the weather information was last updated and the country flag for the displayed city. Clicking on the flag will launch your web-browser into the CIA’s World Factbook page for that country. This is an excellent source for all sorts of educational information about all countries in the world. Another feature of EarthBrowser is webcam links which provide a live camera image from a camera stationed at a geographical point. EarthBrowser connects you with hundreds of live webcams across the world. The webcams range from one minute updates to daily updates, and there are continual additions to EarthBrowser’s webcams list. Again, I was unable to get EarthBrowser to display Webcam images in its own dedicated Webcam windows, although the Webcam links brought the corresponding webcam pages up in iCab. Not sure what the problem was here, since if the browser can download the images, Earth Browser should presumablky be able to as well, but repeated attempts to access verious webcams failed. The links are cool, however. 
EarthBrowser will display the locations and magnitudes of the latest significant earthquakes worldwide. EarthBrowser also offers links to a site that provides current earthquake information in greater detail. Earthquake information is provided by the USGS earthquake server. The server lists the latest 21 major earthquakes around the world including the time, location and estimated magnitude of the quake. The EarthBrowser display will show earthquakes as an animated colored dot with a number over the location of the quake. The number inside the dot indicates its approximate magnitude. The color of the dot indicates its approximate age (youngest to oldest: red, purple, green, blue). Holding the cursor over the earthquake dot will give information about the exact size, time and location of the quake. Clicking on the icon will send your web browser to the USGS website with detailed information about that particular quake. EarthBrowser displays the locations where the most recent volcanic activity has occured. There are also active links to Volcano World. You can get the latest geologic information on eruptions and seismic activity. This feature, like the Earthquake feature in EarthBrowser, is particularly interactive and fun for childern, students, and anyone wanting to become more informed about the earth. EarthBrowser displays accurate global cloud coverage via a composite of satellite images. Cloud images are updated every 3 hours and are displayed in a time lapse animation for up to 2 days. You can view the earth from space to see global cloud coverage, or you can zoom in to view clouds over a geographic region. Satellite images are provided by the Dundee Satellite Receiving Station. The City List Window contains the entire list of cities that Earth Browser knows about. From this dialog you can customize your EarthBrowser display, add and delete your own cities, locate a particular city or find out information about a country. Double clicking on a city in the list will rotate the Earth display to hilight that city. Clicking on a country flag will go to the CIA’s world factbook on that country. 
To add a city of your own, click the “New City...” button. Your city will show up in bold in the city list. You can only delete the cities that you have created yourself, all other cities are updated dynamically by EarthBrowser and can’t be deleted. Images displayed in EarthBrowser are monitored at regular intervals from 5 geosynchronous satellites positioned around the globe. The image of the clouds is patched together from this data to produce an image of the Earth as it currently looks from space. The images are automatically downloaded when an internet connection is present. Cloud images are provided by the Geostationary Satellite Server (goeshp.wwb.noaa.gov). Note: Due to time lag between the various satellite images, some sections of the cloud montage may appear discontinuous (or in my case not at all). You can toggle the display of the stars, city lights, cursor coordinates and help text in the Appearance settings section. In the Control Settings section you can toggle the use of metric values and set if you want the tool and weather window to move around with the main window. 
The grid option allows you to put a latitude/longitude grid over the Earth. You can specify the spacing between the grid lines and whether you want numerical markers or not in the Grid Options dialog. You activate the grid and change its settings from the Commands menu. The screenshot above also shows the webcam icons. System requirements: New in version 1.7 Earth Browser is $19.95 shareware and can be downloaded from: Download
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