The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Google Earth finally has some competition. When the free application first went live about two years ago, it as an instant sensation. Millions of downloads and several significant upgrades later, Google Earth still amazes me each time I start it up. Starting from a view out in space, down to the level of parking lots in major urban centres, Google Earth lets you cruise across the entire globe and visit places you may never have the opportunity to otherwise. Most valuably, like many other applications these days, Google Earth has been vastly improved by the community that surrounds it and uses it. Literally millions of places on the virtual globe have been bookmarked and described by the people who use this free software. You can also design overlays on the globe showing you such simple things as the locations of restaurants, gas stations, hotels and ATMs. Much more interestingly, you can also slew through sites showing ancient history, current events, volcanoes, and earthquakes. But now Google Earth is about to get some stiff competition after several years of having a monopoly on 3-D mapping representations. Microsoft is getting into the 3-D mapping business. As of this past week, people who have strong computers with powerful video cards, and who are using one of the latest versions of Internet Explorer, have access to Virtual Earth, another free product. It's more interesting, but more limited. Currently, Virtual Earth lets you zoom in from a bird's eye view, down to a photo realistic view of 15 urban areas. But unlike Google Earth, Virtual Earth lets you see photo realistic renderings of cities down to the texture on the buildings. Interestingly, Microsoft is paying for this product by allowing companies to sponsor the billboards that appear in the cities themselves. No matter what those billboards show in reality, the companies that sponsor this product will have their names splashed across the cities that are currently available. When this product achieves full roll-out later this year, Google will have some catching up to do. While Google Earth covers the entire planet at least with some detail and urban areas with greater detail, the entire application is a separate stand-alone program. Virtual Earth, on the other hand, is beginning with 15 cities (expanding to 100 later this year) but will run directly in your browser with no other plug-ins or applications needed. These applications have spawned an entire cottage industry of users who spend hundreds of hours adding content for others to use. Everything from lost churches to half-buried Roman villas have been located using these mapping tools. They have allowed scientists to begin tracking environmental effects of pollution and population movements. Those who want to follow changes in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein and all of the places where daily battles are being fought can find all the information they need with these tools. They have opened up entire new ideas of how information can be used by people. Ten years ago the CIA and CNN had access to satellite photos of this quality and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to get them. Now we get them on our desktops for free. 3-D mapping and geographic information are hot fields to be involved with right now and will be for years to come. Where they are headed will be interesting to watch. ([email protected]) Tech Notes runs Mondays.
