Instead of waiting for Google to come out with the time browser, developers at Creare Inc have made their own prototype, the “TimeDrive“. The trick is to split up a large set of data into time-delimited slices, and then let you decide via a control panel on a separate website which slice is sent to a constantly updating network link in your Google Earth. The prototype uses Declan’s avian flu dataset, and it works as advertised. Very innovative indeed.

Matt Miller at Creare says their solution can be applied on demand to KML documents that contain time data; TimeDrive will even aggregate multiple documents. But the best may be yet to come:

We also are working on TimeDrive interfaces to recorded webcam image overlays, e.g. fly-through actual imagery of Times Square in both time and space.

(Via Declan’s Connotea GIS bookmarks)