FAQs

The Content published for the ABC Earth trial consists of video, images and stories developed by the ABC. Content has been chosen because of reference to a specific country or location as well as being associated with a particular event.

Content includes national news, 50 Years of national and international News stories, Foreign Correspondent and Local Radio.

The ABC has developed the trial of publishing ABC content via Google Earth following the trend of many online audiences using non browser based applications to view the content we publish. This trend combined with the current advances in mapping & GPS technologies allows the publication of a variety of geo-location based stories.

The ABC thinks it is important to explore these popular and rapidly growing virtual spaces and 3D applications. Using a 3D globe for the publication of content allows the ABC to present News & Current Affairs in a geographical context for the ABC audience to interact with.

First of all you will need to have installed the Google Earth application on your computer.
Go to http://earth.google.com to download a copy, there is no cost associated with this application other than the bandwidth to download the file.

Then simply click on the ABC Earth link from http://www.abc.net.au/earth
The ABC layer should automatically open in the Google Earth application and you can start viewing the ABC content.

To find out more about the Google Earth application and how to use the controls, watch an introductory video here: http://earth.google.com/intl/en/tour.html

The support pages located at http://earth.google.com/support/?hl=en should be able to answer any technical questions that you have.

Google Earth is easy to use once you become familiar with the navigation. Once you have downloaded the ABC Earth layer it will be located in the Places section of Google Earth navigation window to the left on the screen in the bottom folder called "Temporary Places".

You can turn the layers within Google Earth on and off by expanding the navigation on the left and checking or un-checking the tick box.

To save the file permanently right mouse button click on the ABC Earth layer in the left hand navigation (this will be in the temporary folder section) and click on the save to "My Places" option.

Click on the Newcastle link in the ABC layer and you will see a link for Newcastle Radio Station. Clicking on that link will launch the radio station in a browser window at the base of Google Earth. To turn the radio on and off use the controls for the player located on the webpage.
Note: if you close the page and the radio stream is still playing you will need to re-open the link and use the controls on the page to close the radio stream.

You will need an internet connection (broadband preferably) with the following system requirements.

Minimum Configuration:

• Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP
• Pentium 3, 500Mhz
• 128M RAM
• 400MB disk space
• Network speed: 128Kbits/sec
• 3D-capable video card with 16Mbytes of VRAM
• 1024x768, "16-bit High Color" screen

Recommended Configuration:

• Microsoft Windows XP
• Pentium 4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+
• 512M RAM
• 2 GB of free disk space
• Network speed: 768 Kbits/sec or better (DSL/Cable)
• 3D-capable video card with 32 MB of VRAM or greater
• 1280x1024, "32-bit True Color" screen

Once again for any further support view the Google Earth support pages located at: http://earth.google.com/support/?hl=en

The content developed for the ABC Earth project can only be viewed within the downloadable Google Earth application. The ABC may later release a version that can work within the Google Earth web browser however this is dependant on the full application being released.

If you have the latest Mac operating system you should be able to download and view all content from the ABC layer.
Currently there is a known bug within some of the video content, which is stopping it being played on a Mac, we hope to resolve this bug soon.