Google Earth reads and writes a special form of xml file called a kml (keyhole markup language). Many other geographic viewers and GISs can also read kml files so it’s not a bad thing to be able to make kml files for sample location data. I assume there are many ways to do this. The way I have done it is via a perlscript that I wrote. This post provides that script and explains what it does.
Here is the script, its called texttokml.pl.
It’s very simple and I commented it heavily so even the most naive perl programmer should be able to figure it out and change it but if you want me to hold your hand just ask.
Explanation follows . . .