[UPDATE: The author of the content mentioned on this article deleted his post, so the links no longer worked. I have struck out the links to avoid confusion]
Last summer someone named ‘greenwood’ at the Google Earth Community posted a cool application that takes a live feed of 911 calls and generates placemarks based on an address lookup. The placemarks are classified according to types like “Aid Response”, “Medic Response”, etc. You can download the Seattle 911 network link 
now. If there are just a few current 911 calls, you can open the “Archive” folder and see no-longer-active calls from the last 24 hours. Since Seattle is in high resolution, you can usually see plenty of detail such as the actual house or building where the call originated. The network link automatically updates every 10 minutes.
‘greenwood’ also posted a nice collection of web cams for Seattle , and someone named ‘Renal’ recently posted a collection of placemarks showing the locations of Seattle Fire Departments .
Network Links
NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch Adds Google Earth Data
The importance of coral reefs to our world’s ecosystem is not understood well by the majority of the population. However, more people should become aware because these vital elements to the ecosystem are in serious trouble. The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is well aware of the importance of Coral Reefs and their dire straights and has an excellent web site called NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch to provide tools to the public for tracking near-real-time data important to the environment of coral reefs.
NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch recently released some Google Earth files for monitoring current and annual sea surface temperatures, anomalies, hotspots, and other data around the world. After I contacted them, they changed the files to network links so you can automatically have updates to the current information.
By the way, the photo here is of a beautiful coral reef I saw while snorkeling near St. Barts in the Caribbean – January 2003. You can see some other underwater photos I’ve taken.
Wikipedia for Google Earth and WikiSearch Tool
The Wikipedia is a wonderful source of information which is frequently referenced in stories here. And, there are tools for tying Google Earth to Wikipedia like Placeopedia (which allows people to placemark good Wikipedia articles). Recently, a Google Earth Community member called KASSPER, posted a very interesting Google Earth network link which allows you to see the “best described” 80 wikipedia stories in your current view. Apparently someone named Stefan Kuhn processed a database with about 34,000 wikipedia story locations and ranked them according to description file size. KASSPER then created a network link allowing you to view the locations as placemarks in Google Earth. There are more details about the process and how to participate in the project to georeference Wikipedia stories in his post.
In the same GEC thread, KASSPER also posted a nifty web page tool for searching the Wikipedia database for locations. It dynamically generates place results based on what you type in the search window. This highlights the need for better search in Google Earth. GE’s current search is pretty weak. Kind of weird when you consider it’s from Google. For example, a search for “Richmond” produces one result in GE, but 20 results in the Wikipedia search above.
Follow Volvo Ocean Race Leg 5
The 5th leg of the Volvo Ocean Race round-the-world yacht race started yesterday. They left Rio de Janeiro, Brazil headed for Baltimore, Maryland, USA – a distance of about 5000 nautical miles. They have a scoring gate at Fernando de Noronha off Brazil. Winds at the start yesterday were very light making for some exciting place changes. A GE Community member called ‘lucifer666’ has written a program for tracking the Race. You should download the Volvo Ocean Race file now and see the history of the previous four legs and watch the LIVE race in Google Earth (if you don’t re-download the file you will be missing the previous leg).
Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race in Google Earth
Following in the wake of the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race, the Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race will allow those using Google Earth to follow their race. The race starts in a little less than two days (at 0150 GMT on 01APR2006). You can read about the Goolge Earth feed (or network link) for the race here, or you can download the network link now and be ready for the race when it starts. You will be able to see each of the race boats, its position, and possibly other information such as speed, distance to finish, or distance to the leader. A red rhumb line will be shown giving the shortest distance route from start to finish.