Google Earth Launching For Free 405
Nathan Weinberg writes "Google launches Keyhole 3 today, rebranded Google Earth, and are dumping the subscription rate (except for a $20/year "plus" versions with prettier pictures) available soon at earth.google.com. The program lets you fly around a 3D globe, with overhead satellite photos, tilted 45-degree photos, 3D rendered buildings, and overlays that display everything from roads to hotels to bike routes. I have a lot of info and screenshots at InsideGoogle, and Search Engine Watch has a big writeup. With yesterday's Google Video release, this is shaping up to be a major week for the search giant."
Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah... (Score:3, Interesting)
No Mac support? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does it supports GPSbabel/GSAK (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Better (Score:4, Interesting)
However, Google Earth does have some serious advantages in altitude sensitive data. I like being able to see what elevation my mouse curser is at, for instance.
Additionally, Google Earth has the much needed city and road data for the rest of the world, which I would like to see incorporated into Google Maps as well.
Pilots: Flight Approaches (Score:2, Interesting)
What a great way to visualize approaches to airports you haven't been to before. Just go to the airport you want, tilt the view angle and line up on the runway and you've got a perfect perspective of what the surrounding environs look like. No more trying to blindly search for the airport as you go to a new one. You can research ahead of time and get all your landmarks down pat!
Nice. More Google spyware on your desktop (Score:0, Interesting)
And well, when Google goes belly up it will nice to sell all that fat juicy data to whoever the highest bidder is.
Fuck off Google. You are not wanted
Re:Yet again no *nix version. (Score:3, Interesting)
(* obviously June '04 was a while ago but I doubt the statistics have changed much)
Flight Simulator (Score:3, Interesting)
Crime Stats (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Mod parent up informative... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Terrorism??? (Score:2, Interesting)
Gladly. They've got more chance of being eaten by a shark than killed by a terrorist.
"People need to be more alert"
And report on their neighbors for being subversives. What a wonderful society we'd have then!
"I think people who aren't worried about it are pretty naive."
I think people who are more worried about terrorism than they are about driving to work don't have very good threat assessment skills.
Re:Better (Score:3, Interesting)
Turning off the elevation mapping should speed it up anyway... but without measurements there's no point in arguing that point.
On a larger, empirical argument that has more value, there's more to it than elevation... the elevation would be simple anyway since it's usually just a monochrome bitmap (well, compressed)... no color data. Like I said befure, there's more data. Street dynamics, names, multiple resolution levels for the textures (the most complex part)... all at once. With Google maps, you just download an image for the exact zoom level you are at.
If you haven't noticed, it does download multiple resolutions before you get your final result. This is what is slowing it down.
When I said it was free, I was making a point that you can't expect a compilation of the entire world for free... they'd have to increase their current storage (at least) capacity by more than an order of magnitude.
when running google earth in vmware (Score:3, Interesting)
Now to combine them, new CNN? (Score:2, Interesting)
Next big thing in Google Adsense... amature video journalism.
Re:Better (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm playing with Google Earth now. I'm currently on dial-up, and it's still usable, as long as you are very patient
It does have quite a few labels in Brazil, and it has a neat feature with user-added places in the BBS (looks like they decided to go retro instead of just calling a forum). There are already a few in Brazil.
Should be very neat, as long as people don't start spamming it!
BTW, I've used the trial of Keyhole LT, and Google's free version seem much nicer... A year ago, their trial didn't have *anything* on Brazil, too - not even Landsat-7's 15 meter images, just the default NASA Visible World images.
WorldWind is likely to take a big hit in popularity - the tiny download of Google Earth (10mb vs WW 200mb) is likely to be a major factor to some... Google's servers can also run circles around NASAs.
Too bad for the custom apps - WW being open source gave it a huge advantage there...