@scooby - The cost is in the set up. I would imagine the price tag for setting up this component to the web site cost more than the entire web site last year. Sure, it's quick to get the pic, blurb about boat and crew, etc., but you have to do it for ALL of the competitors AFTER you have developed a format to slip everything into, and it is interactive and tied to the moving, constantly updated position of the boat. Plus, you can't give it to a flunkie - whoever wrote the stuff is intimately familiar or did an awful lot of research.
Sorry, disagee. All it requires is a real time data feed and then the trapping of this data. I would be very surprised if Google Earth do not already have standard interface(s) that you can tap into (for a fee no doubt) that will provide the lat/long in real time based on an imput via a GPS provider/monitor.
The only problem may be formatting the data that is being sent to the "Sydney Hobart race control" people into the form that Google Earth will accept, which I cannot see as being difficult.
Just a bit like a real time feed into a web site.
