the amazing googleEarth

For those unfamiliar with googleEarth, it's a program that takes googlemaps and adds three dimensional, satelite, CG aspects to it. You'll see it used on nearly every major news network today. Whenever they cut to a graphic that includes a zoom into or fly over a city--it's nearly always the pro version of googleEarth. CNN really started using it a lot to show the proximity of different areas in New Orleans during their huricane Katrina coverage.

OK, enough about the background, how is that relevant?

I'm sure some of you have been using it for a while now. The PC version is about a year old. I've been a little late to the googleEarth game since the mac version was released only a couple weeks ago. Turns out you can save driving directions in a file to be shared with others. So to get my feet wet I created directions from the church in Scituate to our reception at the Red Lion in Cohassett. And it's just a cool piece of software. I couldn't even imagine technology like this on a home computer five years ago...much less something that anyone can download and use for free. In the next few weeks I plan to supplement the driving directions on our guest info site with these googleEarth files--even if just for the novelty.

For now, faithful readers of our blog get a preview. Follow the directions below and you too will soon be flying from Scituate to Cohassett.

1. Download and install googleEarth. You can find the file here.
2. Download the googleEarth document I created here. (PC: right-click, "save-as") (mac: alt-click)
3. On your computer, find the document called churchtoreception.kmz. Doubleclick it.
   
4. GoogleEarth will now open and zoom you to the south shore from outer space. Hit play and you see a turn-by-turn flyover. If you highlight "route" and hit play, you get a smooth flyover from start to end.
   

I encourage anyone that's never used googleEarth to play around with it. Major cities and landmarks are presented with the buildings in 3D so you can go down Commonwealth Avenue in Boston with the buildings passing beside you. Or try visiting the Grand Canyon where the topography is mapped out fully in three dimensions so you can fly from the rim right down to the Colorado river at the bottom. It's wild.