There are few websites that are compelling enough to make one consider a broadband connection, but NASA's Visible Earth is one of them. There are literally thousands of images, many of them with amazing detail. Watch new forest fires, look at signatures of human pollution and deforestation, watch the seasons change, you could spend hours at this site even with a very fast link.
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/
Take a look at the link on the Visible Earth page to NASA's Earth Observatory. This site has an education flavor to it and many of the presentations are timely. The weekly newsletter is well worth subscribing to.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
Staying with the near-space theme, but changing the point of view to the region of space between the Sun and the Earth, we have the remarkable spaceweather site. Where else are you greeted with the current solar wind speed and proton density? Auroras, sunspots, coronal mass ejections and more presented in laymen's terms. Images from this page are frequently breathtaking and this serves as the home page on my laptop.
http://www.spaceweather.com/
The interactions between the thin biosphere on Earth and space weather are fascinating. A great read is Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, by Ward and Brownlee. This is the best general audience book I've encountered on the subject of extraterrestrial life. The basic theme is "simple microbial life must be extremely common in the Universe, but multi-cellular life is not." The hypothesis is that the conditions required for the creation of multi-cellular life demand special conditions and even lucky accidents.
Ward and Brownlee detail recent results from a wide range of disciplines including planetary science, geology, biology, meteorology, space weather, physics, chemistry, astronomy and other fields. They then populate the Drake equation with much smaller numbers than is the norm.
Independent of their hypothesis, this is a great presentation of recent (at least within the past three or four years at worst) ideas in these fields at a Scientific American level. They present opposing views in an even-handed fashion and the book is a must-read for anyone interested in origin of complex life questions. Go out and find a copy today!
If complex life is indeed rare in the Universe, taking care of it would seem to be even more important. E. O. Wilson recently published The Future of Life, where he deals with issues of resource depletion from over population. Modern viewpoints are used and he doesn't fall into the crutch of Malthusian arguments.
Wilson notes that we have managed to get ourselves into a very bad position and that there are measurable signs indicating that the trouble has begun. The next two or three generations will encounter barriers that, if actions are not taken soon, will make life on the planet much less appealing. The exact manifestations of these forces are unpredictable, but some very nasty things will occur.
Unlike many books on the subject he presents a few ways out noting that protecting biodiversity is a central issue and this task is not terribly expensive. There are things that governments can agree to do like reduce greenhouse gases, but current government policies in countries like the US and China make such agreements unlikely.
The book is very rich and the style is highly readable (the first chapter was completely unexpected and delightful). It turns out that Scientific American has published the second chapter online. Give it a read
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000E5878-3E45-1CC6-B4A8809EC588EEDF&catID=2
5:05:31 AM 
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