I'm not jaded about the Internet, but I've got a decade of it under my belt. I've seen a lot of cool stuff come on the scene. Then it usually takes one of the following turns:
* goes bankrupt (take your pick of companies in '99)
* gets a court injuction (Napster)
* becomes uncool (any company aquired by AOL)
* inexplicably begins to suck (see above)
It's just rare that I find something truly new & interesting -- and free. Enter "Google Earth":http://earth.google.com/
On top of their far-superior-to-lame-MapQuest "Google Maps":http://earth.google.com/ they have created an application that combines Google search with satellite maps and elevation data. "Blah, blah, blah," I know you're thinking, "What does it mean?"
It means that in addition to getting a satellite image like this:
you can have a 3-D view. Compare this screenshot from "Google Earth":http://earth.google.com/ with my photo of Mount St Helens below it:
Impressive, huh? The controls for zooming in & out, tilting, & turning take a little time to get used to, but it's nothing difficult. And the interface has a lot of options I have yet to play with, so let me know what else you discover. And did I mention that it's for the whole world? Some places have more detail than others, but it's all there.
Now this is only for PCs, and I suspect a dial-up connection would suck (but if you have a dial-up connection, you already know that).
So there you have it, the app that restores my faith in the innate coolness of the Internet -- and all at the Internet's favorite price.
