Geographic Locator for News

Google Earth Blog reports: NewsGlobe a Geographic Locator for News

Many people first find out about Google Earth through some interesting current event in the news which is best illustrated through this versatile Earth browser. For example, millions saw Hurricane's Katrina and Rita using GE. Well, an enterprising company called Daden Consulting wrote a nifty little script to process any RSS feed's headlines and guesses the location the headline is written about and puts a placemark there. They call it NewsGlobe. It apparently only puts up placemarks for stories where it can guess the location. When you click on the placemark you get an excerpt or complete copy of the story (depending on the RSS feed). If you download their default Newsglobe you get just the BBC world news feeds on different topics. Here's their Newsglobe [Google Earth File. You must have GE installed.] with a bunch of different BBC news feeds and a Google Earth Blog RSS feed. :-)

It's easy to add your own RSS feeds to Newsglobe. You simply add a new "network link" under the Newsglobe folder. First you copy this: "http://www.daden.co.uk/cgi-bin/newsbot/newsglobe.pl?url=" into the "Location" field, then append your RSS feed link after the "=". Turn on your new entry and it will automatically scan the provided feed and show you the stories whose locations it guessed. You can read Daden's instructions at the link above. Every story also includes a link back to the authors - Daden Consulting. Smart business move! In the future, I'm sure news organizations will start georeferencing all of their stories and making files available to earth browsers and other mapping tools.

For Tulsa, use "http://www.daden.co.uk/cgi-bin/newsbot/newsglobe.pl?url=http://rss.topix.net/rss/city/tulsa-ok.xml"