Flash Earth
I was just checking out a neat interface called “Flash Earth” today. It was built by Paul Neave in Flash. With it, you can view the earth from 7 different mapping applications including Ask, Yahoo maps, Google Earth, NASA and OpenLayers. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles that Google Earth has in its full form, and it isn’t meant to necessarily, it’s meant to be a zoomable mashup of 7 different mapping programs. And it’s interesting to compare the different programs. It’s especially nice after years of reading blog posts which are pro microsoft, or pro yahoo or anti this or that, each giving its own opinion of whose imagery is better, etc. With this little simple interface, you can see for yourself.
It’s more of a novelty item than a vital tool like Google Earth, in my opinion. For me, Google Earth allows me to print maps, make trip routes, email locations and maps to people or myself, find restaurants and points of interest wherever I go, etc. It’s much more important to me to have THOSE features than to just see where my house is on a map. But if that’s all you need, and also if you want to compare the different 3D mapping sources, then check out “Flash Earth”. It really is a fun tool and it will finally end the arguments of whose imagery is better. Because those were REALLY annoying.
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