Google Earth - WOW

A few days ago, I was browsing Google's page of programs and other random items (here) and found Google Earth. For those of you who haven't heard about it, it's a free program, about 10 mb in size to download, that pretty much contains satellite pictures of every place on the planet. Not only could I find larger buildings with it, such as my school or the local airport, but I was also able to spot my house, which, I have to admit, is not one of those monstrously large mansions. The Grand Canyon is viewable in beautiful 3D, as are larger cities, at least in the United States. Google Earth contains another interesting feature- it lets you measure distances along roads, so if you want to know exactly how many miles and hours your trip to Uncle Bob's will consume, you can find out with a few clicks.

Other than that, I wouldn't really use Google Earth for anything practical, so I would classify the program as something really neat and a great illustration of where technology really is, but not something I would use every day. One feature in it is to give directions from one place to another, which I found rather confusing, and I would still stick to MapQuest if I ever needed to know how to get somewhere. Nevertheless, I would still recommend getting G.E.- it's free, and a great tool to waste an hour with while trying to find familiar buildings and famous landscapes. And the zooming in and out of Earth is breathtaking.

Speaking of Google products, about a month or two ago, I downloaded the Google Web Accelerator, which is supposed to be available here, but actually isn't because there is no more room for additional users. I used it for about a week, and after a few days, it had piled up an impressive amount of time saved (something around 2.5 minutes). Strangely, I was beginning to realize that the more I used the Accelerator, the slower my Internet actually became. So, I turned it off, and magically, my browsing was back to its original speed (I have cable). After turning it on again, the Net was so painfully slow that some pages wouldn't even finish loading completely, regardless of the minutes "saved". I uninstalled the Accelerator and forgot about it until now, but I can't get it back because of the user capacity problem.

Well, my posting is off to a start. Comments are always welcome!