NASA World Wind Java Applet

I like to spotlight Java applets that are out there in the virtual world and with the new release of Java it seemed a good time to mention World Wind. A way to leverage off satellite imagery to explore Earth from the skies. What's handy is there is a World Wind Java SDK that can be downloaded to make your own applications and applets.

For example, an applet that lets you zoom into the world's surface to have a look around. I can go to latitude -39.2825, longitude 175.6023, at an altitude of 35km and see Mt Ruapehu - one of the best spots to go snowboarding in the North Island of New Zealand. This is the kind of applet that should benefit from the quicker start-up times heralded for Java 6 Update 10.