Earth at Night Gadget and Mapplet
A Google Map overlay showing global city lights, precisely correlated to the base map. A striking illustration of population densities, energy usage, and light pollution worldwide.
Want your own Earth at Night map?
-
Add it to your
home page
- Overlay it on Google's My Maps
- Or, get the code for including the gadget on any other web page
Technical Note
This gadget is interesting to programmers for being a cross-API implementation: both the Google Gadgets and Mapplets platforms are supported from the same source. Not only is this preferable from a software-engineering standpoint, it avoids duplication in the Google directory, which is shared between the two APIs.
Interested in doing your own cross-API map gadget? Here's a template outlining my approach.
* Mac OS X 10.4.3 Tiger (or higher) is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link above. When the widget download is complete, Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.