There is something about Google Earth that just doesn’t make it as fun to use as Maps. Maybe because Earth is a lot uglier than Maps? There are all those customization options but no sensible defaults and a very strange aesthetic, completely unlike what you see on the much more subtle and sophisticated Maps.

Navigation also feels somewhat broken. I often manage to get lost in Earth, that doesn’t happen to me on Maps. Is it the added degree of freedom? And now, Street View. It’s not really a joy to use on Maps, either, but it feels atrocious in Earth. It’s slow, it’s too blurry for too long, it just doesn’t feel right.

Earth has all those potentially great features but the UI feels like such a huge step back from Maps.

"Earth has all those potentially great features but the UI feels like such a huge step back from Maps."

You mean, for you.

On the contrary, I find Google Earth UI way better than maps. I have continuous zoom, continuous panning(you could use a joystick, multitouch or mouse wheel easily), huge screen(you could hide left tooltip menu with a simple key).

I just can't understand any of your comments, maybe you have a bad graphic card,I don't know but Earth is way way faster than maps and awesome.

I've felt that the Maps is generally way better due to it's availability as you and everybody else has it, you can embed it etc. It actually feels more integrated to my desktop... I mean my browser.

navigating google earth reminds me of second life

It doesn't do a good job of using the available UI on the Mac at least…

• No pinch-zoom or rotate.

• The two finger panning motions don't work, the vertical portion having been repurposed as zoom.

…but the animation seems smoother and the more prominent date display at the bottom of the view should lead more people to the historical imagery.

The transition to street view is brilliantly done! Moving around in street view is, um, trippy. (Two-finger scroll forward and backward works here, lose all relation to reality if you turn your head with the keyboard. Rotate gestures do not work.)

Pretty spectral artifact at the Missouri Botanical Garden on the north side of the climatron for the current imagery.

Agreed. It also slowed down my entire system to the point where I had to Force Quit it... and even then, it took a good 30-40 seconds before the system got responsive again... I kinda feel like Google Earth is less and less relevant and mostly always revert to using Google Maps instead...

Tangential to the conversation. So theoretically, Google will be able to count the number of trees in a given city right?

Yes you can do it easily since WWII era,now with computers is easier, I suppose they will use brute force as usual for Google.

You could do it just taking infrared and ultraviolet photos, and comparing it with red, green and blue versions, leaves have their specific wavelength response, and some trees leave theirs on winter with specific yellows and browns. They could use it to segment for the tree specie.

Now for the three trunk position I suppose they will use their cars and bikes with LIDAR(very easy at ground level, think on a big kinect), or a very expensive plane with 3d recognition but this is problematic with trees that grow together and you don't know when one ends and the partner starts.

PS: I'm trying to detect trees position myself since a few years ago using aerial photography and ground cameras. I'm finishing a model of Casa de Campo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_de_Campo

I imagine that it would be a very rough estimate. In areas of dense tree coverage in parks or backyards Google probably just plants trees to cover the area since it would be nearly impossible to actually differentiate each individual tree in a canopied area. Trees that are out in the open, standing alone can obviously be counted, but trees in groups probably can't.

That's assuming they're doing the tree counting with imagery. The newer Google Street View cars I've seen have LIDAR rigs on top, so they could be mapping trees that way.

But presumably they aren't driving through most of the forests, right?

I don't see any reason they couldn't do the same from the air. You can tell foliage with LIDAR, and I'd imagine you could get a pretty good approximation of trunk location pretty easily by looking at the foliage height.

Fair enough, but do they collect their own aerial data? I was under the impression it's all collected through by third parties. Also, do they use anything other than satellite imagery right now? Is LIDAR effective at that range?

Yeah, they have some aerial data. For example: zoom in on downtown San Jose in satellite view. The perspective view is aerial photography, and is copyrighted by Google.

Although, now that I've done more digging, it looks like they're using satellite imagery for at least some of this, along with LIDAR and infrared techniques: http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...

Just a hunch: I suspect they're not auto-detecting the trees, but rather relying on (amazing) tools like

http://www.urbanforestmap.org/

That map only San Francisco? I'm going with the LIDAR theory.

They are using this as a vector to install Chrome.

That annoys some people, but at least the people most likely to be running IE 6 or 7 at home are also the ones most likely to remain co-opted-in to a Chrome download.

I have my doubts that bundling a browser with other software will really convert those that don't know what a browser is.

They go online by clicking the blue 'e' icon on their desktop or start menu, as that's what they've always done. Adding another browser or changing the default browser doesn't change this behavior, and IE will ask the user to make it the default again as soon as they do.

I find the forced "Google Update" install more annoying.

Plus, the uninstall note for Google Update points out that if you want to remove it, you must first remove all Google software, otherwise the Updater will be reinstalled within hours.

Odd, I installed today expecting Chrome to tag along (which I was then going to remove) but no Chrome followed.

Still broken as hell on linux: http://code.google.com/p/earth-issues/issues/detail?id=1068

The quality of google earth for linux is an embarrassment.

Broke for me too, but this solved it: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/earth/thread?tid=14469...

On Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install lsb-core

The new Street View in Earth features seamless movement. They apparently do it by mapping the Street View images onto 3D building models. The end result is pretty terrible, though: lots of warping and a visible "pop" when moving from one image to another.

I wonder if zoom-scrolling follows the mouse in the new version. If not, then Google Earth is still unusable and I'll continue only using Maps.

I'd be surprised if they're not working with Rockstar Games to build Grand Theft Auto maps from Google maps data.

Prepare to be surprised.

I instantly recognized that as exploratorium in SF. So, fairly successful realism.

Hopefully it won't crash when I try to run it on Qt 4.7 anymore :D

yay. trees.

Wow. They have trees now. I should watch out for them.