Google Earth

I have been playing with the Google Earth application for the last few days, and I am absolutely blown away. This may be old news to some, but this app is just absolutely fantastic. Consider that you can literally search anywhere in the world, AND zoom in to unbeleivable levels of detail, all for FREE ! 20 years ago, this would have been something we could only dream about (from an average consumer perspective)

This is one of those apps that just reeks of a killer application. Why? Well apart from the reasons I have mentioned already, its an app that my 14 year old son AND my relatively computer illiterate wife love to use. You can just get lost looking around the entire world, all from the luxury of your computer.

The implementation is good, the interface pretty good, the provided level of detail for most areas is good. I am assuming you probably get more with the version you pay for.

At any rate, its just great. Google have been innovators for some time now, but this one is a real standout from my perspective.

I am heading back to look at the Grand Canyon, then Big Ben, and then later might head off to Niagra falls...

 

3 Comments

  • Hey Paul,



    Did you checkout NASA's World Winds?



    It is a similar app that came out about a year ago, and is written in C# (using Managed Direct 3D). Is there anything "better" about what google has done? I downloaded it the day it came out and though "just looks like a World Wind Clone"....Have not looked at it since. I got the same buzz last year from World Winds...and as a bonus it is written in C# and open source ... and from NASA!

  • I'm not sure how much innovation Google did on this one - this application was originally called "Keyhole". Google bought the Keyhole company last year, so Google Earth is effectively Keyhole version 3.



    It looks like the 3D view of cities and the public transport maps are new in this version, and Google's investment has probably helped in expanding the maps to cover new areas.

  • Hi David and David, after looking around a bit, I did find some info on Keyhole of which I wasn't really aware of before and dont know how much google added to this picture, although from what I can tell, Keyhole did cost some money to get and there was no free version (from what I can tell anyway). Again, functionality aside as I never saw Keyhole before and can't compare to google earth.



    Had no idea about the NASA's World Winds though, and being .Net/managed, seems quite interesting. Thanks for the tip, I'll go and check it out.



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