The Outer Glow works so well in Photoshop that I was rather astonished(annoyed, aggravated) at the weakness of the effect in Illustrator. Even at 100% opacity, I couldn't get Outer Glow to show up against my land color.

Of course, almost as soon as I posted that, I found a better method over at the Adobe Forums. After I wrote my blog, of course.

1. Select your text(as an object, not as text).

2. In the Appearance window(Window>Appearance) use the pull-down menu in the upper right corner, select Add New Fill. Make sure your new fill is below Characters in the Appearance stack(this is important, otherwise you won't see your text ).

3. Set the new fill to a color that contrasts with your text. This assures that if, say, you have green text on a green background, at least the glow will be visible.

4. Making sure that the new fill is selected, go to Effect>Path>Offset Path... to widen the fill out beyond the edge of your text. Choose a shape and size that appeals to you. This is art, not science.

5. Now, go to Effect>Stylize>Feather... to soften the edges of the new under-fill.

6. With the Fill still selected, open the Transparency window(Window>Transparency) and set the opacity of the glow to a level you think looks good. This will still vary sensitively with background color. Go figure.

Now you have a text effect that looks about the same as what I did last night for about the same effort and with live updating to changes in label content. So if I go back and decide that Kalthegar is a better name for my capital city or Apple Chancery is a better font for my island/continent labels, ˇˇˇbam!!!, there you are. Easy peasy!