WinGlobe 2 program and data (c) Dirk Djuga 1998, 1999, 2000 Email: WinGlobe@djuga.net WWW: http://www.djuga.net/winglobe.html WinGlobe is Shareware. You have to pay for it if you want to keep it. It's free for educational institutions. To pay send $15 or equivalent in your own currency, cash or check, to Dirk Djuga Hattenbühl 31 D-70469 Stuttgart Germany Or register online by credit card at https://secure.element5.com/register.html?productid=102107&language=English Let me know about wrong data like time, population, any missing major cities or wrong names. DESCRIPTION: WinGlobe is a tiny earth that sits on your desktop. While it does so it can show countries and major cities (about 2800). It knows the population and the current local time of each city. It also shows where it is day or night - and it shows the current weather. IMPORTANT: WARRANTY DISCLAIMER The author makes no warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, including any warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will the author be liable for any incidental or consequential damages arising from the use of, or inability to use, this program. In particular you must NOT assume that the data that is shown is always accurate! DISTRIBUTION: You can copy WinGlobe freely and pass it around for free, as long as this file is included. WinGlobe may not be distributed as part of or for use with a commercial product without written permission by the author, with the following exception: You have permission to include WinGlobe in a commercial Shareware CDROM or other collection, together with other software, as long as the presence of WinGlobe is not the main selling argument. If you include WinGlobe in any such package (Shareware-CDROM or otherwise) please keep me informed. FEATURES: You can left-click and drag the globe to spin it. If the globe is maximized you need just click to recenter it, it is too large then to drag-and-spin. Right click anywhere to get the menu. Choose "Location..." to get information for the location that you clicked. You can also search for a place there based on the latitude/longitude, or a country's or city's name. Just enter part of the name and leave the field. Or click the button next to the city or country field to pick a place from a list. The list will change to match what you enter. If you click a name in the list the location dialog will switch to that place. It also shows the distance between the current and the previous location, as the crow flies. Push "Go there!" or [Return] to spin the globe to the current location. Click the button with the plane to get extended information about the city from the Internet. Click "Zoom in" to get a closer look. Click "Options" in the menu to choose the features to be displayed. You can display a lat/lon grid, country names, city names, city markers, country boundaries and weather. While "day and night" is checked, the globe is iluminated according to the true sun position. Uncheck it to get a sun that is always over your left shoulder. "Magic Mouse" hilights the country, and city that is nearest to the mouse cursor. There are various other options that allow you to tweak WinGlobes appearance and behaviour. You can drag the information that is shown in the Location dialog to other applications that support OLE, like Word, Excel or Wordpad (a simple editor for formated text that is included in Windows) Just click on a free spot in the dialog and start dragging. The cursor will change when you are on a window where you can drop the text. About weather: ============== WinGlobe can show the current weather for places all over the world. When you launch WinGlobe for the first time, there is no weather. Go to Options->Weather and enable the automatic weather download option, or click [Update now] to download weather manually. Weather can be shown as icons on the globe - which is a little ludicrous since there are 1000s of stations - but it will also show in a small panel in the location dialog. This panel also visualizes day and night. You can click the panel to update weather immediately, but this will only get the latest observations. Be careful with the automatic update options if you're connected to the Internet via a dialup connection! If you can't get weather to update because you are behind a proxy or firewall, mail me, I might be able to help. About time: =========== Maybe you didn't know - time is a political thing. Where there are no watches, there is no time. Maybe you think there is a place on the Internet or in your city library where you can look up the current time in any spot on earth. You can't. It works like this: The president of Taka-Tuka announces on May 21st 1998 that henceforth the country of Taka-Tuka is divided into 24 time zones, based on the 24 local pubs. And that on each 3rd Sunday of December, at 2:57 AM, the clock is turned back to the president's wife's birthday. So to know the current time of a spot in Taka-Tuka you have to drink a beer in each of the 24 local pubs and give a birthday present to the first lady (she prefers shoes). I've been there, did that, and so I believe that WinGlobe has the most comprehensive time information available. Please tell me at winglobe@djuga.net when you find a time that is off, so that I can correct it. About the earh that WinGlobe shows: =================================== The earth was composed of data that can be found on the internet. The "relief" look is based on true elevation data you can find in a database called "Etopo5". It is of course drawn exaggerated, and with a fixed sun position. Not even the Himalaya would give any impression of height if seen from space, and if you light it from where the true sun is, you see a bump instead of a mound (a psychological thing). The color of the sea indicates depth, which is also based on this database. The green vegetation is based on "advanced high resolution radar" satellite images that are available at the USGS (US Geographical Survey), mediated over 4 months of the years 95 and 96. So if you expected to see more jungle or something... this is truely what is left of it. Sad. The snow is totally bogus, thrown in because you would expect to see some snow & ice... based on latitude and elevation. Everyone knows that the north pole is mostly ice covered, but in WinGlobe you can see some water up there. I decided not to simply draw in an ice cap (haven't been there anyway...) About the rest: =============== Latitude and longitude in WinGlobe is shown in human readable format (like 30°20'10" W, 10°20'30" S) but you can also enter decimal degrees like -30.34 -10.35. Population counts are based on dated data, usually around 1996, but I have gone to some lengths to supply new data for countries like the ones that dropped off the former Soviet Union - also you will find updates on WinGlobe's homepage http://www.djuga.net/winglobe.html Anyway consider these rough estimates. The time and date in WinGlobe is shown in the format you chose in your Windows installation. You can eg. change to 24hrs time in Windows and get 24hr time in WinGlobe as well. Names are usually the English version, or the English spelling of the local version. If you know a more accurate population count for a place, or find the name or country that is given for a city to be grossly annoying (eg. I guess there's some "Lhasa, China"...), mail Dirk at WinGlobe@djuga.net Introducing the WinGlobe Web: ============================= If you have access to the Internet you can click the big button with the plane on it to make a virtual trip to the current city on the WWW. You can see what the weather is like, listen to the local radio station or even watch local TV. You can mail me your favourite URL to WGW@djuga.net. You can also submit it online at http://www.djuga.net/winglobe/WGW/WGW_intro.html. FAQ: Q: How can I move WinGlobe on my desktop ? A: Grab it in the center where the arrow-cross appears, hold the left mouse button and drag it. Q: How can I change it's size ? A: Grab it's edge and drag. Just like with a rectangular window. Q: It looks too dark/light. Can I adjust it? A: You can tweak it's appearance in Options/Appearance. Q: I want a black night side! A: In Options/Appearance check the "Twilight Zone" box. This will give you a black night and the sunset/dawn should resemble closely what you see if you look out of the window (if you have day & night checked) Q: The time is all wrong! Can I adjust it? A: Check if your time zone in Windows is set correctly for where you live. You get at the time zone settings by doubleclicking the clock in the task bar. Q: It's STILL wrong! A: For these hardboiled cases go to Options/Special. You can enter an offset that will be added to WinGlobe's time. You can enter negative hrs and fractions of an hr, like -10.5 Q: I think you should put WinGlobe in the notification tray, instead of the button on the taskbar. A: The idea was this: You can launch several WinGlobes and dress them up like "New York - Rio - Tokyo". Then you can always see the different times by moving the mouse over the taskbar. But you can get rid of the button in the taskbar in Options/Special. If you're so inclined you can then make it really small and move it to the system tray, on top of another useless tray icon ;) Q: Spinning the globe with the mouse is very slow! A: You should uncheck the "Drag & Spin" box in Options->Special. Now you can spin the globe by point-and-click. Generally a smaller globe will redraw faster, it will also be faster if you don't show boundaries. Q: I want WinGlobe to come up at the same place on my desktop / centered on Taka-Tuka always. It always comes up in the upper left corner centered on Germany ? A: WinGlobe does store all it's current settings - size, position, location, options, when you exit it. If Windows is shutdown before you exit WinGlobe, it doesn't get a chance to remember it's state. HISTORY: Since release 1.2: Added live weather made the system menu available made "Zoom in" possible added more detailed boundaries added "Favorites" menu rotate in very small steps (enter "0") made it resize more gracefully Since release 1.1: fixed the distance calculation fixed the AM/PM designators with 12hrs time added search lists for cities and countries added drag & drop of the info in the Location dialog added option to synchronize the system clock with a time server on the internet added rotation ability added drag & spin mode added various configuration options added tool tips introduced the WGW Various data updates Since release 1.0: added country and state boundaries made "Distance" show the "from" location made Latitude/Longitude show and accept coordinates in the form 1°2'3" W made it behave somewhat more sensible when it is resized Watch out for updates at http://www.djuga.net/winglobe.html