Google Earth Blog points the way to a site with interesting data on the Antarctic region, packaged as a network link. You can use it to find the current position of larger icebergs, the extent of the sea ice, the location of bases, and more.

Both this site and the one for the Arctic blogged previously are linked to Polar View, a project sponsored by ESA. All this is pretty much a dress rehearsal for what’s coming: Next year is International Polar Year, and we can expect many more such outreach programs.

(One obvious item on the wishlist: Upgrading the image detail in Google Earth of the polar regions. There is plenty of raw source material, but last time I tried turning these into overlays I ran into positioning conflicts, as we are getting rather close to the poles, which are a sort of singularity in the reference system Google Earth uses.)