Google Earth

Yesterday Ray introduced me to Google Earth, a free PC application that provides a searchable map of the globe from space. That's right! They have stitched together satellite maps of the globe,a dny uo can search for a city and zoom in on your street! When you jump from city to city it does this fantastic pan out and zoom across the planet thing. In the larger American cities there are even 3D (grey) representations of the main buildings, so you can rotate to a side view and do a fly-through the 3D city. Unbelievable. They say that the Mac version is coming soon.

I was hooked in the space of a minute and showing Ray all of the places we had lived and where I'd been on my last overseas trip (yes, he quickly got bored).

But I thought that it would be an excellent visual aid for prayers in worship. You'd need broadband access in church. Before the service you can bookmark the places and close up shots. Imagine looking at the Gaza strip from above while you pray for the people of Palestine and Israel, then zooming across to Kings Cross, London, to pray for the bobm situation, then zooming to Papua New Guinea where folk from your church have just gone on a work party, then zooming back to your neighbourhood. You might have to hand out motion sickness tablets, and I wouldn't do it every week, but the sense of being part of a global community is quite extraordinary.

In honour of jonny's worship tricks I'm going to start a "media spice" list shortly and make this number 1.

Comments

[Duncan Macleod]

So do you have a PC to use this on? I agree it's an excellent opportunity to connect people visually. I did the same thing with an Earth Ball in worship once. At least with this approach there's no danger of the earth bouncing and landing on the communion table.

[Ray Ellison]

Well I didn't get bored Craig... I find it fascinating to see all sorts of places ive never been.

I guess I was originally lured to Google Earth by a need to visualise the path the wireless bridge between my house and my brother's takes (and how many tall trees intercepted it)

The maps and indexing in the program are VERY US Centric at this stage although the imaging is updated on a continuous basis.

With regards to running Google Earth on other platforms, Ive read folk on line saying it can be run under "Wine" and Im trying to do that myself at the moment (no success yet), and I guess it could run on OS-X with a suitable windows emulator.

If you know how to run wine under debian derivatives, id be very happy to hear how.

Ray