Google Earth: Helping me spy on those pesky Ruskies!

I am convinced that Google has plans to take over the world.  Think about it.  They have Google Earth, used for all kinds of applications, google maps, the only really respected search engine, online documents, images, even a satellite...really, if you are at all involved with the web (and who isn't, right), you can't get away from the big G.

When I first saw Google Earth, I was scared and wowed.  I could see right down to my own house.  Big Brother was watching.

Now, Google Earth is available on the iPhone.  And for such a complicated app, it's surprisingly simple.

When you launch the app, you will see (surprise) the earth in the middle of your screen.  On all four corners of the iPhone screen there will be different icons: a search icon, an information icon, a compass, and a "find my location" button.  Let's take these one at a time.

Pressing the "find my location" button does just that.  The image zooms into your location on the globe.  If you are already zoomed in to a different location, pressing this button will make your camera view zoom out slightly and zoom across the terrain like the space ship in "Flight of the Navigator" (I love that film).

Of course, the compass in the top left-hand corner keeps you oriented at all times.

Wanna look at New Zealand?  Hit the search button and type New Zealand, and off you'll go.

Finally, click the info tab to change settings like showing borders, labels, terrain, and latitude longitude.

But how does it work, HAL9000, I hear you screaming at me through the tubes of the internet.  Why, it works like all other apps on the iPhone...with a series of intuitive finger gestures!

You can pinch to zoom in and out, drag to move across terrain, and do a two-touch spin to rotate your view.  Also, the app has an (optional) tilt control.  If you hold the phone flat on a table, you see  straight down on the terrain.  Hold it up in front of you and you see the view you would have from a helicopter.  Put it somewhere in the middle, and it automatically adjusts your view based on your tilt perspective.  It's pretty spiffy.

Now I'm going to turn into the bastard.  The lag time/load time on this app sucks.  Bad.  It takes forever to load detail as you zoom in and out, and sometimes images won't follow for a number of seconds.  If you are trying to find a location on the map, especially on edge or 3G, you can almost forget it.  Better stick to the "find me" and "search" features.  And even those take a while because they do the fancy (and admittedly cool) zoom-in animation.  I wish there were an option to turn off the fancy animation and just show me what I want to see.

Also, what is the real use of this app?  It's cool, but I rarely want to look at the terrain and latitudinal coordinates of Hawaii.  I'm sure all my fellow geeks can educate me, and I welcome that.  Comment below, friends.

So, overall it is a cool app with problems and not much real-world use.  It's free, though, so it's definitely worth at least checking out.  I doubt it will stay on your iPhone too long, but it should amuse you for at least a few minutes.  And in this world of hyper-stimulation and immediate gratification, that's sometimes all we can ever hope for.

Get Google Earth free HERE.