3 of 9

Write now Article Tools

The concept
*

Imagine a globe of the Earth. What if you could take that globe and spin it in any direction to look at it at any angle. Now imagine you can zoom in and out as you please surveying the seas and continents. Take things one step further and imagine being able to zoom right down into the Grand Canyon, get a birds-eye view of the Eiffel Tower or even your house. In essence, this is what Google Earth is all about. Part map of the earth part sight-seeing tour it is like the World's most interesting Geography lesson.

"Google Earth" is another masterstroke from the Internet search giants. Available as a free download in it's most basic form it puts the Earth at your fingertips in a way I never thought possible. Want to see Mount St Helens in all its fearsome glory? With Google Earth it is simplicity itself. I should perhaps point out before I start getting too excited that Google Earth is a Broadband specific application. It takes a lot of processing power to run so anyone on dial-up would almost certainly lose the will to live waiting for it to run. However, on our Tiscali Broadband 1MB Broadband it runs no problem at all although it is as I said a memory hungry programme. As such it is not something you can toy with while browsing the net, doing your homework or playing games, not on my 256mb machine anyway as it tends to slow itself and other programmes to a virtual standstill. Saying that the recommended requirements are 512mb+ so perhaps it is more feasible on a more powerful machine.

The programme
*

So, the boring bits are out the way so lets boot her up. Double-clicking on Google Earth initializes the programme which presents itself like something out of NASA with a control console to the left and bottom and a large 3D globe of the earth fully navigable via a central console with the traditional arrow keys. Initially the earth is on it's traditional axis so we are able to navigate round it the old-fashioned way. Those of us with even the most fundamental knowledge of geography should be able to happily negotiate the continents. However, Google Earth is no ordinary Atlas-style depiction. We are able to rotate, zoom and tilt our Earth to our hearts content. This allows me to further examine continents, countries, cities and even individual hamlets at my leisure. Feeling like some sort of God but longing to see some specific sites (after all my Geography is not good enough to find the Grand Canyon all by myself!) I am able to type in the majority of cities

• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Google Earth explained?
We want to hear your view. Write now!