Google Earth 7 with tour guides and 3D imagery

By Martin Brinkmann on November 1, 2012 - Tags:mac software, Windows software

Google released a new version of Google Earth, the company's "world exploration" software yesterday.  The new program version is already available on the official website where it can be downloaded for Windows, Mac and Linux.  The two major changes in the new version of Google Earth are tour guides and 3D imagery of select cities.

Mobile Google Earth users already know the feature as it has been added to the mobile version of the application for iOS and Android several months ago.

The tour guide feature aids you in the exploration of places of interest. You do not have to be nearby to use the feature, but it certainly can be useful if you are visiting a foreign country or city and have some spare time for sightseeing.

You will notice the tour guide thumbnail bar at the bottom of the main window of the Google Earth desktop application. It automatically updates the list of available tours when you change the position, either by rotation or zooming. You can alternatively use the search at the top left to zoom in on a place or location you are interested in. Each tour is visualized with a thumbnail, a play time and the name of the place, object or location.

A click on a tour zooms in on it which may take some time depending on how fast your Internet connection and processor is. The default view mode is 2d only, and you need to select the 3D buildings options on the left sidebar to display buildings in 3D if available.

3D imagery has already been available for the following cities and places in previous versions of Google Earth.

• Boulder
• Boston
• Charlotte
• Denver
• Lawrence
• Long Beach
• Los Angeles
• Portland
• San Antonio
• San Diego
• Santa Cruz
• Seattle
• Tampa
• Tuscon
• Rome
• San Francisco Bay Area
The new version adds the following metropolitan regions as 3D imagery:
• Avignon
• Austin
• Munich
• Phoenix
• Mannheim
The search takes you directly to those locations on the map. The tour guides basically show locations from different angles but fail to provide you with detailed information about what you are seeing at the very moment. You will find snapshots scattered around popular places which you can hover over. Snapshots depict points of interest in the form of photos that you can take a look at from within the application.
The default Google Earth installer is a web installer that requires an Internet connection to download program files during installation. To download the Google Earth offline installer select advanced setup on the download page and uncheck the "allow Google Earth to automatically installed recommended updates" option there to download the full installer.

Google account security gets an information boost

By Martin Brinkmann on November 1, 2012 - TAGS: None

Google makes available a Security menu when you open your account on the official web page that enables you to manage security related features of your Google account. This includes enabling the - essential - 2-step verification to add a second dynamically generated password to the log in process of your account, password management to change the password and configure account recovery options, and the list of authorized applications and sites.

You can hop over to Google Security right now to manage those features. If you are not familiar with computers, you may run into issues using the settings page. First, it does not really contain lots of information about the options presented here. While you can hover over a question mark that is displayed next to two of the three options to display a help text, it does take multiple clicks to find out essential information about the account.

Google is currently processing an update that improves the Security page in several aspects. The first change that you will notice is that options are separated into groups on the new page which helps getting things done faster. Each option, for instance recovery options, is now listed with a description right on the page, so that you do not have to hover to get basic information about the feature. If you do need additional information, you can still click on the learn more link next to each item listed on the page to do so.

You will also notice the new notifications group on the page which lists linked mobile phones and email accounts that Google may use for account alerts. These alerts are fired of when a password change is being made or when there has been a suspicious login attempt.

You can define the notification type for each device individually on the very same page. Say you want to receive password change notifications by email and the suspicious activity information to your phone.

The new Security page does not reinvent the wheel, but it adds information to a page that was rather bland and uninformative. It may take a while before the new page pops up under your account. Right now, mine is still showing the old Security page with its four buttons. (Lee Jarrattvia Caschy)