Around the Earth in 80 milliseconds!

Having read in the press about Microsoft and Google’s ongoing War of the Worlds situation (here and here), I immediately downloaded Google Earth, their renamed and revamped application from the company Keyhole, which they purchased last year.In short, Google Earth is a small, free Windows-application that allows you to view the Earth in 3D, with streamed (not real-time) satellite-images textured across the entire surface of the planet. Literally. It has embedded zooming abilities, you can shift the viewing angle, and turn everything upside down as you see fit. So it basically lets you visit any spot on earth in ultra-high detail (where available). There are plenty more features, but I’ll let some screenshots I made do the talking.Pretty nifty, eh? NASA has something similar called World Wind, but at a massive 180MB download, it can’t quite compare to the sleek 10MB that Google requires you to get. Also, the resolution is not quite as good (as far as I could tell).Beware: This software can easily steal a couple of hours of your time! Don’t try it if you aren’t prepared for this!