Now Zoom In!!!
by Gary Woods

Did you ever want to take a look at your house from space? Well with Google's new offering called Google Earth you can. Google has been incorporating the technology from a company called Keyhole into its Google Maps service, and now all of the imagery is free. Unlike other Google services, this doesn't run in a Web browser but requires downloading an application - which is available currently only for Windows and is free at http://earth.google.com.

Using the program which Google describes as "part flight simulator, part search tool," you can fly anywhere on the globe and zoom quickly from an outer-space view to a close-up that shows skylights, swimming pools, and individual cars on roads.

Google Earth's brilliance lies in its mosaic of thousands of satellite and airplane images collected by Keyhole. For most urban areas of North America and some rural ones - as well as metropolitan regions of Europe and select locations in the rest of the world - you can make out objects as small as a few meters across. Elsewhere, it feels like you're gazing down from a plane at 30,000 feet.

On a PC with a decent graphics system and a speedy broadband connection, you really do experience the sensation of flight. A mouse with a scroll wheel helps. Turning the wheel zooms you in and out; holding the wheel down and moving the mouse changes your perspective from a straight look down to a nearly horizontal view.

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