The two services do have some big differences, though, and there’s a cool application that lets you see the two of them side-by-side. The Yahoo service is called Yahoo Maps, and it’s very similar to Google Maps. Microsoft’s mapping service used to be called MSN Maps, and now it’s been changed to Bing Maps with their new identity. There are similar services from Yahoo and Microsoft. I actually like the printing function of Google Earth better, since it’s using your printer directly, and not going through the web browser.Īnd if you really hate using products from Google, no problem.

You can type in your address and get a view of your house from above.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed Google Earth, you can see a 3-dimensional view of Earth that you can zoom in and out and spin around. The main difference between Google Maps and Google Earth is that you have to download and install Earth on your local computer (they have a version for PCs, Mac, Linux, and even the iPhone). You can save the image or print it off.Īnother cool tool from Google is Google Earth. Once you do that, you’ll get a free satellite view of your house. You can also type in the address of the location that you want to see. You can then zoom in, or pan the camera around to see any location on Earth. When you first start up, Google Maps displays a satellite view of North America. All you need is a web browser and a connection to the internet. The best tool on the market, in my opinion, is the service from Google Maps. If those whole Earth pictures don’t give you enough detail, let’s zoom in, and see some pictures of houses from space. There were also some amazing new satellite images of the Earth released from the European Space Agency’s 3rd generation Meteosat spacecraft. Here’s a composite photograph that shows the Earth’s Western Hemisphere, and here’s a view of the Earth’s Eastern Hemisphere. If you don’t want a live view, and really just want to see a beautiful view of the Earth’s hemisphere, check out these images produced by NASA. The weather systems you’re seeing in those images are happening on the planet right now. What is really cool about these satellite views is that they’re live. But you really can’t see any specific spot on Earth with any detail. From these images you can see major weather patterns affecting parts of the Earth. For example, NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) release images of an entire hemisphere of planet Earth every 3 hours.

If you want to go way out and just see a satellite image of the entire planet, there are some solutions for you: weather satellites.

Satellite zoom earth