I just stumbled on a great looking globe based data visualization tool: WebGL Globe.
The screen cap at right is from a browser based visualization of 1990 global population data. While not realted to Ecosynth, this is a really cool technology that could be valuable for other research in our lab, like visualizing global data for understanding global relevance of locations and studies, the GLOBE project.
Some of the example global datasets are fun, Google technology user group meetings or blogger mood, but it would be interesting to see some more ecologically relevant data plotted this way. For example, trends in estimates of forest cover or urban growth.
Can't wait to see this in 3D, or maybe in a holographic projection!