Quite a lot of AJAX desktops popped up since Web2.0. NetVibes is most flexible, has a mini API and accepts external moduls. First attempts of integrating ExploreOuPla.net as iframe failed, the full screen interface is not optimized for small windows.

But having a deeper look into the documentation I found netvibes runs a nearly full abstraction layer and started implementing a subset of the OGC WMS specification to have a nice daily satellite photo viewer at the end.

At first time loading the modul does not knows what to show. It should geolocate the user via ip address or fall back to Paris, France. Geonames runs a webservice with the Maxmind GeoLite City dataset and achieves 97% accuracy for countries.

AJAX can not transport browser’s ip address because the netvibes proxy has its own. Dynamic Javascript is needed but Netvibes evaluates only static javascript without a scr attribute. So now the modul creates a dynamic Javascript using DOM during load.

You may give the modul its own tab with one column only and enjoy bigger photos.

Or you load the modul several times in a multi column layout to watch more different places.

Three maps are available: Daily Terra, Daily Aqua and cloud free Modis Blue Marble as reference. All are fetched from the NASA OnEarth WMS server. At any time you can change to the EOP full screen interface by clicking on the location link.

Depending on your timezone and choosed area the daily maps are not older than 48 hours. Normally they get updated at 10AM GMT. Sometimes access to server is restricted due to overload.

Have fun, check out example netvibes tab or add the module to your desktop.