CYBER TRAVEL: You can explore a destination before you get there
DEBORAH STOKES
Province
On the Google Earth website, you can zoom in on a country, a city, a neighbourhood, a home.
Fasten your seatbelts for a wild ride. Zoom from the White House to the former Republic Palace in Baghdad. Land in Moscow’s Red Square then fly over to Pyongyang, North Korea. And remarkably, you don’t have to leave home to do so.
You can just sit at your computer and access an amazing new service called Google Earth, software that puts satellite images of almost every inch of the planet within reach of your mouse — for free. It is no exaggeration to say it is the ultimate armchair travel experience.
You can zoom in from space to street level to explore cities, landmarks, buildings, road networks, mountains, lakes, valleys. You can key in the address of the hotel you’ll be staying at on your vacation and check out how long it will take you to walk to the nearest Starbucks.
Yes, I’m gushing, because Google Earth represents a paradigm shift on the Internet. And I’m not alone in my praise.
“This reminds me of the first days of e-mail. The idea you could send a message to France in an instant was so exciting,” says Internet consultant and author Rick Broadhead. “Normally, technology like satellite imagery was only available to large media organizations or institutions. Now, Google has made it available to pretty much anyone, for free.
“Is it a huge leap for ward? Absolutely.
“People are stunned when they see this. It’s so powerful, they almost don’t know what to do with the information.”
The benefits for travellers are clear — or at least as clear as the resolution of images on Google Earth.
What I’m saying is that some locations are clearer than others, because different areas are covered at different resolutions. (In technology terms, the resolution varies from one kilometre per pixel to six inches per pixel. At the lowest resolution, features such as mountains and lakes are visible. At the highest, you can see cars on the street, even people in Tiananmen Square.)
The images are not live. Indeed, some are a year or two old. That’s how Google explains away the scarier aspects of this technology. Some nations, such as India, Thailand and South Korea, have complained that Google Earth exposes politically sensitive areas, leaving them vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
“It is important to know that Google Earth is built from information that is already available from a wide range of both commercial and public sources,” says Eileen Rodriguez, spokeswoman for California-based Google.
“The same information is available to anyone who flies above or drives by a piece of property.”
There are all sorts of other bells and whistles on the downloadable program (go to http://earth. google.com), which at the moment is available only to Windows users and only in English.
Three-dimensional mapping of 38 U.S. cities allows you to “walk” around actual buildings. And sophisticated video technology allows for “fluid, free-form” exploration. Users can zoom in, tilt and rotate around whatever they see.
“You can literally explore a destination before you get there,” says Broadhead.
That may take away some of the surprise factor for travellers, but sometimes that’s a good thing.