[Paul K]

Google Earth

Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in -- Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the worldââ‚ƚ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s geographic information at your fingertips.

From http://google.blognewschannel.com/in...hing-for-free/

The program lets you do smooth sailing flybyes of the entire Earth. You can easily fly to any spot on the globe, by entering any associated data, like street addresses, place names or lat/long coordinates. There are overlays that put additional information on the map, like roads, international boundaries, terrain, 3D buildings, crime statistics, schools, stadiums, any number of interesting stuff.

You can do Local searches in the program, with icons on the map and a display on the side showing your results. You can leave notes, called †œplacemarksÃƚ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‚à ‚ÂÂ� all over the map, so you can remember where all sorts of places are. Searches and placemarks can be saved as bookmarks in †œMy Placesââ‚Ã⠀šÃ‚¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ÂÂ�. Everything can be output in an XML format called KML, that will allow the vast popularity of Google Maps to continue in Earth. You can also email a JPEG of the map, or send a KMZ file if you know the recipient has Earth installed.