Out of all the free software on the web, I think Google Earth is my favourite. Not because anyone’s asked me to say that, because it just is.
The sheer scope of it is ridiculous, I mean the whole world, ffs. When I first downloaded it (actually about two days before my wedding in 2005) the resolution for the smaller places etc was poor. Now I can see the house I grew up in in astonishing high res. It’s frighteningly like the high tech you’d see in 80′s (and probably up to ’00s) on films about spies and wars and the CIA and dismiss with a “that’ll never happen” shrug. Imagine it ran in real time, now that’d be stalker heaven!
Anyway, these are some images from Google Earth that I’ve downloaded to my desktop. I’ve actually been playing on it for hours now – I’m not sure if that makes me really dull? Hover over the images for the place names.
