Way too cool... Google Earth is addicting

Google Earth is quite possibly the coolest gizmo to come down the pike for ages, and promises to change the world of information in big ways. I've been playing around with Microsoft's Terraserver page, where you can call up satellite views of just about any location in the U.S. for some time, but this takes things to an entirely new level.

A basic version is available free, though you need to have an up-to-date computer for it to run well.

And for $20 a year, you can upgrade it to a version which allows you to use it in conjunction with a GPS device, complete with downloading waypoints, routes, and track points.

You can easily spend hours and hours just playing with this thing, looking up landmarks, geographic features, or just your house.

Cooler yet, you can have it map a route between two points, and then the app will "fly" you along the route, showing you the intersections and turns as if you were actually flying over them.

With the 3D building overlay turned on, you can even fly around, say, Chicago, and swoop between buildings, rotate and tilt your view, and generally have a blast.

It's truly like a cool video game that you can play for hours, especially if you're a map geek like myself. And the thing covers the entire earth, not just the US and Canada!

For instance, when I downloaded waypoints from a Garmin GPS, it included way points for the Garmin factories around the world. One click and you rise up thousands of feet and fly all the way across the pacific and then descend down to a street level picture of the location in Taiwan. Another click and you fly back to France to their European headquarters.

Try it and you'll see what I mean.

You owe it to yourself to check it out. But be forewarned, you won't get much done once you start to play with it.