The Earth According To Google

There seems to be quite a bit of news from yesterday but I swear I found this just before it hit the press. I clicked on "More" on the Google homepage, something I very rarely do, but I must have been bored. An interesting Google Earth caught my attention so I downloaded and installed.

Read moreAll I can say is "Wow!". In fact that's pretty much anyone could say when I showed it to them. It allows you to search for any place on the globe and then "fly" there and zoom in to a satelite photo. Some places have excellent detail (Budapest). Some are quite blurry and can't really get that close (Vienna). Some places even have the buildings mapped out in 3D so you can get down to street level, view it horizontally then take a tour of the city (San Francisco).

It's a bit demanding of the poor old computer. There's a lot of info at Google about what computers should be able to run it but even so, I'm sure it was the reason for a couple of program crashes so far. It's still worth it. If you're up for being an experimental test mouse for Google's beta program then go and get it. Once it's installed, just type some place names into the search field in the top left and as Mazda says, Zoom, Zoom.


Google Earth view of Budapest. You can get a lot closer than this though.


Heroe's Square and a bit of the park.


The London Eye, in er... London.


We'll always have Paris.


While hunting around the Swindon area for decent detail I stumbled upon a plane.