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As I was writing about a place I've not been in a couple of years I decided to look it up on Google maps. What I discovered was their new street view options is far more complete and useful then I had imagined. I was able to look at multiple locations and change my writing to conform to a bit of reality.
Posts: 47 | Registered: Jul 2008
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Another nifty tool in google's repertoire: We use google pedometer to figure out exact distances for runs (DH) and bike rides (me). Using the aerial view, you can click onto anything - so we can click the path along the paved bike path rather than the road, our previous best estimate for distance (other than GPS-aided watches, which are all broken right now...)
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Google sky is great for celestial research. I like Celestia better because of the ability to run scripts and import imaginary objects, like space craft and planets with 3ds rendering. Neither shows binary star systems' distinct objects. Celestia has six classes of extrasolar planets. Want to see what the sun looks like from Sedna or Barnard's star? Want to fly through the Solar System at 3x light? Celestia is the tool.
Celestia will run on linus, mac, unix, windows platforms. It's a resource intensive app, will run slowly with 128 M memory. I've got 2 Gigs and haven't had any hiccups.
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I used to have to get USGS maps to find out a lot of things...not sure how the two stack up against each other...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Does anyone know if Norton Security Scan is automatically downloaded with Google Earth? That's what I gathered from the Terms and Conditions for Google Earth, and I'm concerned about Norton fighting with the McAfee software on my computer (which has happened before).
Posts: 1139 | Registered: May 2008
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Dunno, but if I'm downloading one program, and get something unwanted with it, I just uninstall the second program. It's never snarled up the one I want yet.
Posts: 185 | Registered: Oct 2007
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I can't imagine that they're going to give away free copies of a commercial product, nor that they're unaware that having more than one security product running on a computer can cause severe problems. If it automatically installed Norton then millions of users would be seriously annoyed.
I haven't used it, don't plan to, but I imagine it's either some functionality from the Norton product that enables Google Earth to verify that automatic updates it downloads are authentic; or maybe it does Google Earth maps of hacking attacks as they jump from one server to another around the globe in an effort to hide their traces; or perhaps it's a free demo copy of the Norton product.
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I'll guess I'll just download the Google Earth "package" and see what happens. I want to gather more visual information about a real setting for one my novels.
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I'd be surprised if anything that comes packaged with Google Earth causes unwanted side effects. If so, I'd complain. After all, Google's motto is "Don't Be Evil"
So far, I think they've lived up to it quite nicely. If you're gonna take a shot on any company, they're prolly the one.
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