"Wow." "Amazing." "Incredible."
Sit next to someone who is trying out the new, free Google Earth program for the first time, and you're likely to hear similar exclamations.
"If you're going to write about this, tell your readers to be prepared to spend a few hours in awe."
So what's all the fuss about? Put simply, Google Earth shows you the world like no other software program ever has. Download Google Earth (http://earth.google.com), and within minutes you're looking from outer space at the little blue ball we call Earth. Type a location into the "fly there" box and you zoom down from outer space, with topography, countries, and cities slowly coming into view.
But the real magic happens next. Zoom further down, and Google Earth gets more detailed -- much more detailed in many cases. This is where the exclamations of incredulity usually arise from first-time users. The program uses high resolution imagery drawn from a number of sources, including images taken by satellite and aircraft over the past three years, to give you a representation of the earth's countries, cities, towns, and streets that is detailed to the point of showing individual houses, boats, cars and trees.
"Broadband streaming technology" and "3D graphics, much like a video game, (allows) users interactively to explore their world, either their own neighborhood ... or the globe," says John Hanke, a general manager at Google who helped oversee the Earth project.
Most users are startled at the level of detail available in the program. But don't be too concerned: what you see in Google Earth isn't real-time data, nor is it so detailed that could zoom in to see yourself looking at the computer with your mouth hanging open -- at least not yet.
But you can see plenty. "I can locate my own townhouse," Medley said, exclaiming, "I could even spot my car sitting in the parking lot."
Google Earth does not offer that degree of detail for all places. Currently, selected cities and towns in the US are covered in high resolution, but greater high-resolution coverage of major areas around the world is underway and will be added in the coming months, Google notes.
A complete list of high-resolution coverage is available in the coverage list that is freely downloadable from http://earth.google.com/coverage/google_earth_coverage_list_2005-06- 07.pdf.
When starting off, choose places such as New York City, Paris or the Grand Canyon in Arizona to get a taste of the mapping detail.
According to Google, the best view you get is equivalent to a 1m distance. A little experimentation will show that you not only get a bird's eye view at street level but can also alter your perspective and zoom through the streets horizontally, as though you were looking at things from an automobile cruising about the ground.
Depending upon the speed of your computer and your Internet connection, a bit of patience may be required when first viewing a location. That's because Google Earth streams necessary data to your computer as you zoom in on a location. The small footprint of the initial installation means that you're getting basic code to run the program; as you exercise the program's features, more information is downloaded to your PC on an as-needed basis.
A status bar labeled "Streaming" along the bottom edge of Google Earth's main screen lets you know what percentage of the data currently in view is complete. The good news is that the image builds dynamically, so you can see cities, towns, topography, and even street names and buildings appear before your eyes when you first view a location.
At some point while using Google Earth, you'll probably wonder how Google can offer so much functionality free of charge. While Google is typically tight-lipped about how it monetises free offers, it's fairly easy to see how Google Earth could generate plentiful revenue streams. First, there are options in the program that allow you to display information such as coffee shops, restaurants, lodging and rental car locations in particular locations; advertisers will pay to get their information displayed in a program destined to receive the amount of attention that Google Earth will.
Also, Google Earth is currently available in three versions. In addition to the basic Google Earth, there are two retail editions: Google Earth Plus and Google Earth Pro. The Plus edition, available for US$20, includes GPS integration, allowing you to read and track locations from your GPS, high-resolution printing, customer support, and annotation capabilities.
The Pro version, which costs US$400, includes multiple terabytes' worth of imagery and 3D data depictions of the entire Earth, more than you get with the other two versions. A host of other features is available in the Pro version as well.
Google Earth will run on most PCs sold during the past two years. It does require a PC or notebook with 3D graphics capabilities for rendering the detailed topographies it provides. Full system requirements can be found at http://earth.google.com.
War in the Taiwan Strait is currently a sexy topic, but it is not the only potential Chinese target. Taking the Russian Far East would alleviate or even solve a lot of China’s problems, including critical dependencies on fuel, key minerals, food, and most crucially, water. In a previous column (“Targeting Russian Asia,” Dec. 28, 2024, page 12) I noted that having following this topic for years, I consistently came to this conclusion: “It would simply be easier to buy what they need from the Russians, who also are nuclear-armed and useful partners in helping destabilize the American-led world order.
Last Thursday, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) detected 41 sorties of Chinese aircraft and nine navy vessels around Taiwan over a 24-hour period. “Thirty out of 41 sorties crossed the median line and entered Taiwan’s northern, central, southwestern and eastern ADIZ (air defense identification zones),” it reported. Local media noted that the exercises coincided with the annual Han Kuang military exercises in Taiwan. During the visit of then-US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in August 2022, the largest number of sorties was on Aug. 5, “involving a total of 47 fighter aircraft and two supporting reconnaissance/patrol aircraft.
July 7 to July 13 Even though the Japanese colonizers declared Taiwan “pacified” on Nov. 18, 1895, unrest was still brewing in Pingtung County. The Japanese had completed their march of conquest down the west coast of Taiwan, stamping out local resistance. But in their haste to conquer the Republic of Formosa’s last stronghold of Tainan, they largely ignored the highly-militarized Liudui (六堆, six garrisons) Hakka living by the foothills in Kaohsiung and Pingtung. They were organized as their name suggested, and commanders such as Chiu Feng-hsiang (邱鳳祥) and Chung Fa-chun (鍾發春) still wanted to fight. Clashes broke out in today’s
Xu Pengcheng looks over his shoulder and, after confirming the coast is clear, helps his crew of urban adventurers climb through the broken window of an abandoned building. Long popular in the West, urban exploration, or “urbex” for short, sees city-dwelling thrill-seekers explore dilapidated, closed-off buildings and areas — often skirting the law in the process. And it is growing in popularity in China, where a years-long property sector crisis has left many cities dotted with empty buildings. Xu, a 29-year-old tech worker from the eastern city of Qingdao, has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers for his photos of rundown schools and
RSS