If you are looking for the locations of amusement parks and roller coasters, the best collection for Google Earth I’ve found so far is from BozAdventures.com. They have posted their database of amusement park placemarks 
as a network link at the Google Earth Community. There’s a bit too much blatant commercialism in this, but it still is fun to look at all the parks and to find out how well you can see the rollercoasters in Google Earth.
Once you download their network link from above you will see the BozAdventures logo icons. Currently, their focus is clearly on the US, but there are a few parks in other countries. Zoom in further and you will see there is a lot of information contained here (literally hundreds of roller coasters are marked). When you click on the placemark you will see their logo blazened in the description and a sometimes useful link which will take you to their database entry for the placemark. Not all of the entries have information, but you can sign up and add your own feedback to their database. I think they should allow anyone to update the data (more like a Wiki), and then their data might get populated more quickly. Anyway, this is a fun collection of placemarks!
Network Links
Near Real-time Flight Tracking in Google Earth
A couple of days ago someone at the Google Earth Community posted a new dynamic data network link for tracking of all inbound flights into Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The data updates currently about every 15 seconds. Once you download the flight tracker , you will see the airplane icons and tracks showing the last few position updates of the airlines flight. If you click on the airplane icon you get its altitude and airspeed.
What is really neat is zooming in on LAX and watching airplanes slow down, descend and land at the airport. And don’t forget, you can tilt your views in Google Earth and see the planes do their descent in 3D.
This network link was developed by some guys at fboweb.com which provides services to pilots for doing flight planning, flight logs, provides airport information, and flight tracking. They also provide services so pilots can do their job and get data with a PDA. Here’s the thread of posts where the dynamic data link was posted.
EarthBooker – 80,000 Hotels in Google Earth
In the United States and the UK you can search for hotels and get some results. However, the rest of the world is not available yet within Google Earth’s search. Thanks to the power of the network link and business enterprise you can view 80,000 hotels all over the world. EarthBooker.com not only provides a web site for browsing for the world’s hotels, but also a Google Earth network link which they call EarthBooker.
Once you download EarthBooker , zoom in to a location to see hotels. The closer you are, the more hotels will appear (assuming there are hotels from their database there). If you click the hotel you will get a description, a picture, and of course links to make a reservation, get more information, or even ways to get a newsletter. Of course, you can also get directions from Google Earth and you can use GE to search for nearby tourist locations (simply turn on the Google Earth Community Layer to find all kinds of things nearby).
This is an excellent application of Google Earth’s network link which makes GE a fabulous 3D browser. The application for EarthBooker was developed by GlobeAssistant.com which specializes in writing business applications for Google Earth particularly for Real Estate, News, and Travel.
Geocaching.com Uses Random Approximate Coordinates in Google Earth
On 22 October I wrote about Geocaching.com supporting Google Earth as a powerful way to search Geocaches. At the time I had no official announcement from the company. Here’s a link to the announcement, which provides some additional details on their Google Earth suport.
The most interesting thing about this announcement is this: “…the coordinates used in Google Earth are only an approximation and can be up to 100 ft from the actual location. Do not use the coordinates in Google Earth for cache hunting” Apparently, Google Earth is so accurate in showing cache locations they felt it would take away some of the fun if the placemark showed the real coordinates. If you select “View Cache Details” from the placemark and then “edit” the placemark, select “advanced”, select “Location” and compare the coordinates they will be different. Now, given that GPS’s are already off by anywhere from 5-75 feet, the actual error in location may be even bigger. You could just enter the real coordinates from the web page if you don’t like this feature. But, its interesting they chose this approach. Or, could it be that Geocaching.com was concerned someone would start saving the Google Earth network link placemarks and create their own database of the geocache coordinates?
The announcment also…
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Meteor Craters on Earth
Over the last few millions of years the Earth has had quite a few impacts from meteors, asteroids, and maybe even peices of comets. Scientists have confirmed 172 locations on the Earth determined to be “impact structures”. In fact, the leading theory for the mass extinction of many animals, including the dinosaurs, 65.5 million years ago was an impact crater known as the “Chicxulub crater”. These locations have been documented in a database available at the Earth Impact Database.
Thinklemon.com has taken the Impact Database and created Google Earth network links (he gets extra points for this) which not only shows the location of the 172 impacts, but shows a size indicator for the larger ones and provides links to Wikipedia articles and other information in the descriptions. He has organized the list by major continents and also includes a list of the top 25. Here is his announcement with his links, or you can download the entire collection now. This is a very nice collection, and since I have a degree in astronomy myself, I just had to write about this. Great job Caspar!
By the way, a good friend of mine has spent over 20 years as an astronomer helping to find near-Earth objects which may someday strike the Earth. He works at the Spacewatch Project at the University of Arizona. If anyone with lots of funding is looking to help us make plans to avoid a major future impact, Spacewatch would be a good project to fund.