A nice google earth demo

Today I spent entirely too long playing with Google Earth and aprskml. This is a server writen in Java that connects to an internet source of APRS packets and converts them into KML. You can then connect Google Earth to the server and watch things move about, or if you pick a house sit still!

APRS is a real-time tactical digital communicatons protocol for exchanging information between a large number of stations covering a large (local) area. As a multi-user data network, it is quite different from conventional packet radio. The best bit is that the packets can be picked up and forwarded over the internet for people to view, map and otherwise play with. For example I spent this afternoon watching a tourist light airplane trip over the Florida Keys.

I'm looking at making use of APRSKML as a basis for a GeoRSS server that will allow me to watch planes etc through the geotools GeoRSS datastore that I haven't got round to writing yet because watching things move is so adictive.