"Free" Software -
GOOGLE Earth
What a great idea: The whole world on your desktop, almost literally! Geographical features,
cities,
beaches all accessible
from a globe, where you just zoom in on the places of interest.
Google Earth also covers all sorts of useful information for the traveler and in
in effect a world map
with indexing to hotels, restaurants, bars, banks, railways, sights, etc.
It may already be the word's
largest
Internet portal - if not already it will be when ready in the final version;
presently this is 3.0.548-beta.
With regard to security, for the private user, no problems except the
need for a very fast DSL
1 Mbit/second at least. It is logical that when you zoom in on just 3
cities , look for places you may
have stayed, then the aggregate network use amounts to 12 MB in just 10 minutes.
For a corporation, Google Earth may prove a very big surprise, when
multiple employees catch on the
excitement of Google Earth and then perhaps start using it regularly as a portal
for the evenings booking
at
restaurants, etc. Lots of time can also be spent with GE looking at
prospective holiday locations, the
possibilities are endless... So is the aggregate bandwidth consumption!
With regard to spyware, Google Earth is presently not infected - no illicit
traffic takes place to and from
the application.
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