Rain and shine hit Google Maps and Google Earth
Two of the most useful online services have got to be maps and weather.
With this in mind, The Weather Channel Interactive is offering a new mapplet for Google Maps that lets people add customizable weather layers to maps and see weather data on Google Earth (download it for Windows or Mac OS X).
One click and you can see the clouds over San Francisco on Google Maps. Pop-up bubbles provide more detailed information like current conditions including temperature, humidity, wind speed and UV Index. You can also find links to forecasts and track storms.
The weather information combines data from Doppler radar, satellite, lightning strike detection, computer models and climate profiles.
The weather mapplet is in the Featured Content section in the My Maps utility on Google Maps, while the data is in a weather layer on Google Earth.
Google Maps now shows weather data compliments of The Weather Channel Interactive.
(Credit: The Weather Channel Interactive/Google)
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html