The recently released Google Earth seems to be very handy for planning your travels.
The recently released Google Earth looks like a really great tool for travel planning. It gives a full 3d view of the earth as seen from satellites, and in many places enough detail to see people (it uses the same database as google maps).
With a handy bookmarks type feature, it really seems great for planning and documenting your travels.
There is a web site
http://www.googletouring.com/ which showcases this rather well, and is building up a list of pre-made "tours", and looks like eventually being a good place to preview places for travel.
Reply to this Yeah -
Google Earth is a great product. I'm hoping to add maps.google.com features to travelblog to show route maps in each of the blogs... interesting times in the online map world at the moment.
Reply to this Wowww.. what a great breakthrough in Google.. This is so cool!!! Thanks so much...
Reply to this I've been working on the google mapping last few days (actually working on it now) - the route display that will be added to travelblog will allow street level routes to be shown, or RTW flight plans - all using the same system.
The downside - maps are only complete for US, Canada, UK, Ireland and Japan... but when there is more data it will be added in automatically.
Will post a link here to a demo soon.
Reply to this Frankly the Google Earth Project is still in it's infancy, however, the potential is fantastic. The ability to eventually view the number of seats on an outdoor patio of your long dreamed of Paris sidewalk cafe is amazing. (lol) Sure, sounds bizarre at the moment but planning your travel via Google Earth is going only to improve. On my TRAVELSAPIEN Blog okay okay at http://www.travelsapien.blogspot.com it started out as an experiment. Thinking along the lines I see down the road for a moment,Google Earth can be used to plot, enquire, and likely book holidays. Now as I have done on my own BLOG I have added two new elements that also compliment travel planning. The Business Man Airport Weather and of course World Weather links with so much detail it boggles. Then I have added Earth Cam so visitors can also view LIVE video streaming in Cities they may be visiting in the near future. Times Square always comes to mind. It is things like dynamic weather information, and, live video views of places you intend to visit is huge. Added down the line such an item like Google Earth and travelers have an amazing information base to study up on making a trip and reviewing up to date data on the circumstances of weather et al. Love it! Keep tripping everyone. Travel can be fun.
Reply to this Thinking along the lines I see down the road for a moment,Google Earth can be used to plot, enquire, and likely book holidays
I'm sure google are thinking along very similar lines 😊
To add to the discussion - Microsoft are entering this area as well -
MSN VirtualEarth...
And we're counting down the days for the new travelblog mapping system 😉 (with help from google)
Reply to this 
