A free useful tool: Google Earth

[LaZyDayZ]

Dont really know where on the baords to post this but I use it all the time. It's free and really helps when you want to know where a certain town or lake/stream is.

It called Google Earth. Here is some text from the site.

Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in -- Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.

Google Earth puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop. View exotic locales like Maui and Paris as well as points of interest such as local restaurants, hospitals, schools, and more

Here is a link

http://earth.google.com/

mods- Hope the link is appropriate, just thought this was a good free tool that many would enjoy.

[cylinder]

I use Google Earth a lot. Also check out www.maps.google.com. You can shoose from map/satellite/hybrid views.

[BlackLabGuy]

If you sign up for $20 you can also connect your GPS and overlay tracks and waypoints onto the maps/images. It is pretty cool depending on the area and quality of images for that area.

[cylinder]

If you get a Merlin V620 Wireless PC Card Modem in your laptop you can have high-speed Internet anywhere (pretty much) you get a cellular signal. Then you can look up maps and images in the car or boat.

On some lakes you can see shallow structure in the images if it's a hard bottom area. Check Potato or Sand, for example.

[cylinder]

The cellular Internet service costs about $60/month, but you can use it in your home or cabin too. If you know how, it's not too tough to use that laptop to allow access from other computers to the Internet (sharing the connection.

I have a customer who listened to a local radio station (Internet broadcast) in his car from Florida till he got home through this service.

[870Express]

What are the advantages of Google Earth over terraserver?

[cylinder]

I think that Google Earth is easier to navigate, has better resolution and better overlays. Personal preference.

They're free, try them both and decide for yourself.

[schweady]

Google's got yet another solution they're experimenting with:

Flash Earth

The big advantage: nothing to download (although it probably requires Macromedia's Flash application) so can jump on any computer and start searching.