EarthBrowser for Windows

In spite of a few stability issues, we mostly like this informative utility for monitoring global conditions. When you launch EarthBrowser, you'll see a nicely designed globe rotating against a starry sky. A small control panel in the application's upper-left corner lets you decide what sort of data the globe will display. For instance you can view weather conditions, wildfires, earthquakes, icebergs, buoys, storms, volcanoes, and cloud cover. You also can determine, for example, whether the map shows city lights and names of countries and oceans. Clicking on the appropriate globe icons takes you to more in-depth informational Web sites or local Webcams. Zoom tools allow you to get a closer look at a specific location.

As you might expect, this program does consume a lot of memory when running in the background, so it best suits folks with powerful computers. Also, when we tried to access a few of the demo's forbidden features, the program froze up on us. It was only when we tried to shut it down by its taskbar icon that we were able to unstick it and continue. Nevertheless, we can suggest EarthBrowser to anyone interested in keeping an eye on what's happening on the planet.