Saturday, September 10, 2005

It's a virtual world...

My favorite toy of the moment is Google Earth.

How do you fancy being able to see a virtual planet earth floating in
front of you awaiting your command? At the flick of a mouse you spin
the globe around to the general area that interests you, double click
on a country and within seconds you are zoomed in to view high
resolution ariel images of your home town... well at least if you live
in the USA! Here in the UK the story is a little different as most of
the imagery is a bit on the low resolution side, a situation I'm sure
google will improve over time... (guys?)

One thing that you'll probably need is a broadband connection as the images are downloaded as required (otherwise I guess the install would be huge!!)

If I were a geography teacher (which thankfully I'm not) this piece of kit would be number one on my list of must haves. As it is I've lost count of the hours I've spent (wasted) just browsing this little green and blue ball we all live on...

Now I'm a self confessed google fan, the google guys and gals have produced some pretty cool free software over the last year or so picassa, hello and gmail (from where I'm posting this) to name but a few. Now a cynic might say that this is no more than the natural progression of the viral marketing model driven by a need to increase brand awareness. Whilst this may be true who really cares? I'm already well aware of the brand and the google software offerings really do do what they say on the tin. It all works (even the beta stuff most of the time) and it's all free, at least for the time being...

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