We have seen a few Rotating POV Globe in the past. Scitech has a Arduino based Rotating POV Globe which looks quite nice, the refresh rate of the camera screws up the effect a bit but I assume it looks perfect in real life.

“The Rotating POV Globe utilizes the arduino uno as the central control brain which contains an Atmel AVR microcontroller. Essentially we have a rotating ring which contains up to 32 LEDs in this particular configuration. As the ring rotates, changes in the configuration of the LEDs will give the impression of a consistant and persistant globe or sphere covered in LEDs. The best way to describe the construction of a Rotating POV Globe is with a description of the hardware followed by a description of the software.”