Animated News Globe

One of the major news providers could create a web page which features a 3D animated world globe. The globe would be colored and labled to show information, and it would be crawling with little animated people and objects. The little people would act in ways that show current events in their part of the world. You could watch miniature battles and skirmishs that reflected the current wars. You could see characters who are sick from disease epidemics in various parts of the world. You could watch major storms and weather move across the globe. You could spin and zoom the globe, and click on characters to get more information about their activity. If you zoomed in on Utah and saw some little characters jumping around in ski outfits, you could click them to pull up information about the olympics, for example. The scale of the figures would be greatly exagerated, as would the scale of events based on their significance. It wouldn't be like a space photo of earth, it would be more like a sim game. The fires in California would hardly be visible from space, but since they are newsworthy, large flames could be shown spewing from California in the areas of the fires, for example. Or the World Trade Center ruins would be large enough to clearly see on the globe when that news broke, even though they would have to fill most of New York to be visible on the globe. The globe would be updated with a high-level language, and it would be updated manually by the people from some major news agency. It gives you a rough idea of the major news of the world in one quick spin, and it gives you a clear sense of geographical location to go with the news.