Through a joint effort by Rice University and the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS), Smilex' president, Dr. Colin B. McKay created Earth Today, part of an innovative web-based multimedia public outreach project called "Space Update" to display the vast amount of NASA's archived and daily updated earth and space science data images via a suite of computer-based interactive kiosks. To monitor program usage at HMNS, user-tracking protocols were developed and implemented. Space Update software was installed as a suite of 6 kiosks in the Houston Museum of Natural Science, averaging over 300 hits/day. It has been used by more than 100 museums and secondary schools nationally.

This project established a model for public information dissemination that is being replicated in schools and museums nationally. Space Update was funded by the NASA Digital Library Technology Program.