Google Earth Thrills With Photos, Stunts, But How Practical Is It?
It's good to have a healthy skepticism about the claims of the hype-driven technology industry. But there are times when even a hardened skeptic has to admit to amazement and delight at the sheer coolness of some of the things you can do on a personal computer today. And one of those "wow" moments happens the first time you run a new program called Google Earth.
The program lets you view satellite and aerial photos of pretty much any spot on the planet. In big metropolitan areas in the U.S., Canada and Western Europe, you can locate, and zoom in on, individual buildings and houses, and see cars and trees. You can overlay streets onto these urban images, as well as markers indicating restaurants, hotels and more. In other places, you can make out only towns and large geographical features, like lakes.
The program rapidly fetches the images from the Internet and visually "flies" you from place to place around the globe. The process is so fluid it feels like a Hollywood stunt. For instance, if you're staring at a bird's-eye view of St. Mark's Square in Venice and you type in your address in Boston, Google Earth will zoom out till you seem high in the sky, then rapidly "fly" you west across the Atlantic into the U.S., and then stop right over your house.
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Walt Mossberg reviews Google Earth, the search engine's new virtual mapping service.
Google first released the program last week at earth.google.com. But demand was so high that the company's servers were overwhelmed, so Google is intermittently turning off downloads. You may have to visit the site several times to download the software.
When you first try Google Earth, you'll want to type in all the places you frequent and see how they look from the air. You're also likely to call in family and friends to see how cool the program is, which is exactly what I did. I located my house, my office, my old college dorm and the house where I was raised. I wowed visitors by typing their addresses into the program and "flying" them to aerial views of their houses.
It's an amazing demo and a great example of how much power computers and the Internet have put into the hands of average people. The trouble is, I'm not sure how practical Google Earth is for most people. In many cases, it's better to look at a map of an area rather than a photo of rooftops. Driving directions can be clearer when superimposed on a map, rather than on a giant photographic landscape where specific features, like signs, can't be seen in detail.
Google Earth, which runs only on Windows PCs with 3D-capable video cards, isn't the first software of its kind. Satellite photos have been available online for years, and Google Earth is based on a product called Keyhole that the big search company purchased last year. Microsoft, which has been in this field for a long time, is working on a similar product called Virtual Earth, which is due out later this summer.
But Google Earth is the first free satellite-photo product I've seen that makes navigating the globe really easy, and that integrates local databases of businesses and other important sites so you can quickly locate them right on the aerial images. You can search for dry cleaners in Cleveland and quickly see a satellite map of that city with the dry cleaners marked on it.
When you play with Google Earth, you notice some odd things. For instance, the details of the White House roof have been blanked out, presumably to obscure security features and vulnerabilities. And all but the outline of the U.S. Capitol is deliberately obscured. But the Pentagon and CIA headquarters are shown crystal clear, in considerable detail.
Confusingly, Google offers another satellite map service besides Google Earth. The company's Google Maps service, which runs in a Web browser instead of the special Google Earth software, uses the same maps as Google Earth, and it can alternately display a map or aerial photo of a location, something Google Earth can't do. But Google Earth offers many features Google Maps lacks, and it allows you to zoom in much more on the photos than Google Maps does.
With Google Earth, you can add your own place markers, with custom icons, to the aerial photos. You can save lists of places and return to any of them with a couple of mouse clicks. The program also allows you to save, print or email snapshots of the aerial images you find.
One very cool feature allows you to get driving directions and see your route outlined on photos of the actual roads. You can then click on a VCR-like "play" icon to take a virtual drive along the route.
A big limitation of Google Earth and other similar programs is that they show only rooftops, which tell you little, not the fronts and sides of buildings. Google Earth tries to compensate by adding featureless 3D-drawn images of buildings in some big cities, but the effect isn't great.
Microsoft plans to leap ahead on this issue. Its Virtual Earth product will include real photos of the fronts and sides of buildings, taken using planes equipped with multiple cameras that capture a 45-degree view. Google says it is working on the same thing, but it has announced no release date.
You may not use Google Earth every day, but it's worth fooling around with just because it's cool.
Google Earth让你“遨游”地球
对于喜欢大吹大擂的科技业来说，保持适当的怀疑不无益处。然而，个人电脑今天的发展实在是太酷了，以至于那些坚定的怀疑论者有时也不由自主地感到惊诧和欢喜。这不，新型软件Google Earth一推出就让大家喜出望外。
该软件能让你看到地球上几乎每个角落的卫星和空中摄影照片：对于美国、加拿大和西欧的大都市地区，你可以定位并放大单个建筑物和房屋的图象；你还可以在上面添加街道，并标出餐厅、酒店等建筑的地理位置。至于其他地方，你只能看到城镇和那些显著的地理特征，如湖泊等。
Google Earth能很快地从互联网上获取图象，然后带你从地球的一个角落“飞到”另一个角落。这一过程非常流畅，简直就是好莱坞的特技。举例来说，如果你正在鸟瞰威尼斯的圣马克广场(St. Mark Square)，然后在电脑输入了波士顿的地址，Google Earth会先缩小图象，似乎你正在空中飞翔，接著向西”飞过”大西洋至美国，“降落到”你家。
Google上上周在earth.google.com上率先推出了这个软件。不过，巨大的需求导致该公司的伺服器不堪重负，只好间歇性地中断下载。因此，也许你得访问该网站好几次才能下载成功。
当你首次使用Google Earth时，你也许想输入所有去过的地方，看看它们的空中风貌。你也许还会召集家人和朋友一起欣赏这么酷的软件。我也是这样做的：看了自己的家、办公室、大学宿舍以及儿时的住宅。我还输入了亲朋好友们的地址，让他们“飞上天空”，俯瞰自己的住处，让大家兴奋不已。
这是一次愉快的演示，它展示了电脑和互联网给普通人增添了多么大的威力。但问题在于，我不知道Google Earth对于大多数人来说是否实用。在许多情况下，区域地图比屋顶照片更方便直观。比起在一幅显示不出细节的大幅风景照上添加旅行方向指示来，在地图上添加自然更清楚。
Google Earth适用于带3D显卡的Windows个人电脑，但它并非独一无二。卫星照片已经在网上问世好几年了。Google Earth的原形是Keyhole，这是搜索引擎巨擘Goolge去年收购的。微软公司(Microsoft)进入这一领域也有很长时间了，目前正在开发一个名为Virtual Earth的同类产品，并定于今年夏季推出。
但Google Earth这个免费的卫星照片软件是我见过的最方便的环游地球的软件，它包含了各地企业及其他重要地址的数据库，因此你可以迅速在空中摄影照片上确定它们的位置。你可以搜索克利夫兰的乾洗店，并很快看到带有乾洗店标记的城市卫星地图。
不过在你使用Google Earth的过程中，你也会发现一些奇怪的事情。例如，白宫上空就是一片空白，可能是有意遮掩安全保卫设施和易受攻击的地方吧。美国国会除了轮廓之外，也是什么都看不见，但五角大楼和中央情报局总部显示得非常清楚，包括细节。
令人迷惑不解的是，Google还推出了一项卫星照片服务Google Maps，它是在网络浏览器上运行的。虽然不是专门的软件，但它使用的地图与Google Earth的完全一样。不过它既可以展示地图，也可以展示航空照片，这是Google Earth做不到的。但后者提供了许多Google Maps没有的功能，而且还可对照片进行高倍放大。
有了Google Earth，你还可以在航空照片上添加自定义图标，为地址做上标记。你还可以收藏地址名单，只要轻点鼠标就可以找到。此外，你还可以存储、打印照片，并通过电子邮件发送。
它有一个非常棒的功能，那就是标明道路驾驶方向，并在道路照片上显示线路走向。你可以点击一个类似录像机上的“播放”图标，在线路上进行模拟驾驶。
Google Earth及同类软件的一大局限是它们只能显示建筑物的屋顶，没有正面和侧面的信息。Google Earth试图通过对一些大城市添加三维图象来加以弥补，但效果不明显。
微软公司打算在这上面领先一步。该公司的软件Virtual Earth将包含建筑物正面和侧面的实景照片，那些照片都是飞机通过多台能拍摄45度视角的摄像机拍摄的。Google表示自己正致力于解决这一问题，但尚未宣布推出日期。
你也许不会每天使用Google Earth，但它真的值得一玩，因为它实在太酷了。
