Google Earth has long been a great time wasting program for looking at the Earth and looking at the stars.  Now they’re adding more usefulness to the program.  I mentioned the Congress spending feature in my previous post.  Now they’re including a weather layer with sub-folders for clouds, radar, conditions and forecasts, and information. The clouds information is updated hourly with data from the Naval Research laboratory in Monterey. The radar information is updated every 15 mminutes, while Weather.com provides forecasts.

You can also download KML files showing the last 24 hours of cloud data or 6 hours of radar data.

Google has also added the MDG Monitor, a layer that shows how countries are doing in meeting the Millennium Development Goals to do things like combat poverty and hunger, improve education, fight HIV/AIDS.