Google Earth

It's Friday!!!! I just can't wait to get home tonight so that I can drink beer, play video games and work on the SCAUG newsletter. You know you are a nerd when that is your excitement for the weekend.

Today I am talking about one of the coolest things to hit the GIS World since the Geodatabase. Google Earth!!! I am addicted!!! What a fun, fast, easy to use tool that is free. Yes, you heard me correctly, FREE! Well, most of it is free. You can upgrade to better versions for a fee, but most of the coolest stuff is free. You can zoom from your hometown to the desserts of Africa to the Grand Canyon in a matter of seconds. It streams the data across the internet, but renders the images in a way that doesn't effect performance. Now that you are getting excited, did I mention it has 3D buildings in most major cities? You can tilt the globe so that you are standing on a street in New York City looking up at the skyscrapers. You can also use it as a what I am calling a "geo-search engine". If you are in Chicago and you want to find a pizza joint, just type "Pizza" in the local search field and they are placed on the map along with links to their websites. Wow!!! To learn more please visit, www.earth.google.com. Did I mention it was free?