Viewing ice flow changes in the Arctic via Google Earth is pretty cool, but what about the antipodes? You're in luck. Polarview.org, an "initiative of the European Space Agency and the European Commission, with participation by the Canadian Space Agency, to make earth observation (EO) services more accessible and affordable to anyone interested in the Northern and Southern Polar Regions," has developed a KMZ file for Google Earth providing Antarctica datasets, including both station locations and daily ice data.

By itself, Google Earth doesn't actually have terribly detailed maps of Antarctica; evidently, the photographic satellites the program uses don't take many south pole pictures. The Polar View Antarctic KMZ improves the situation, providing substantially higher-resolution images for selected sections of the continent. They aren't the six-inches-per-pixel resolution of some of Google's maps, but they're much better than the default view. Sadly, WorldChanging favorite Dome C isn't covered in these updated maps -- but now you can see exactly where it is!

(Via Google Earth Blog)