14 DAY TRIAL // The news about last weekend's devastation Cyclone Nargis brought upon the state of Myanmar has rapidly spread all over the world. As it usually happens in such cases, an important number of charity actions are taking place worldwide in order to come to the aid of the victims of the devastating Nargis. Among them, Google has come out with a way to help us better digest the entire picture of the disaster.
With the help of Google Earth, users can now see the way the Nargis Cyclone has impacted Myanmar. The guys at Google have put together a Google Earth animation of the Cyclone making its way towards the state of Myanmar. Users can download the KML data file, after which they can watch the animation by clicking the Play button located in the upper right of the Google Earth screen.
The animation has been set to move in three-hour increments for the days leading to disaster, after which you will see the cyclone approaching Myanmar in single-hour increments. The images have been trimmed down in order to contain only the affected area and occupy less data space. However, in order to fully download the KML file, you will have to be patient, as the data is still rather large. According to Google's Lat Long Blog "after a few runs through the image sequences, the animation will play smoothly."
Besides the new layer added to Google Earth, a number of Google Grants non-profits organizations joined forces to help the victims of the devastating Cyclone. The help comes in the form of either volunteers or money donations. Anyone who desires to get himself involved in this charity work can find more things by checking out Google's Grants blog. We can only hope that the job done by Google and other similar societies will make Myanmar victims cope better with the disaster.
As part of Google's efforts to support the Myanmar victims, the Google home page now features a direct link to a special donation page. Users can directly donate to either UNICEF or Direct Relief using the provided donation page.
