____________________________________________________________


I've never forgotten what it was like to be on the internet first time - I still get a warm glowing feeling inside when I think of the Mosaic logo. Oh.. I'm in Switzerland! And now I'm Norway! Thankfully, sometimes something happens which comes close to that primeval rush.
I can stare endlessly at maps, reading romantically sounding names and wondering what it was like up there, how it would look like to just stand on a street in Trabzon or on a mountain slope of Kyrgyzstan... can these places be so strange and exotic as their names sound?
Along came webcams (no, outdoor webcams) and it was good. Being able to watch a canal in Venice or a square in Kyiv/Kiev, and what's happening there right now - it's like having a few extra windows in your room.
Then there was Google Earth, and it became better. Suddenly, there was this huge globe inside your computer (partially on the internet actually) and on it weren't names and symboles, but actual streets, houses, fields and mountains, in 3D even if you adjust your settings.

Google spawned Street View, and then it got really strange. If you don't know what it is, install Google Earth (it's free) and activate 'Street View' in the left column. Zoom in on Paris. Zoom in even further, until you see that the streets are dotted with little photocamera symbols on regular intervals. If so, you're almost in business. Zoom in until the cameras turn into glass balls, with a fish-eye warped street view inside. It's kind of eerie, as if the city is actually an illusion from the Matrix, projected into these little globs, with a deserted flat landscape outside it. Double click on a ball, and you're on street in Paris. You can look around you, you can zoom in on shops and people (most faces are blurred though). It's not like watching a documentary or someone's photo - you decide where you want to look, there's no blind corner where the photographer can hide incovenient and ugly things for you.

Yesterday it was announced that there's been added a 3D representation of Ancient Rome. That is, if you have the English edition of Google Earth - otherwise the Updater ([link]) will tell you that you're uptodate already, and "Ancient Rome in 3D" in the Google Earth gallery (in the left column) will just be an incoherent swarm of 3D buildings, not a real city. You've guessed, I don't have the English version of Google Earth.
Do I care? Not. Because I discovered that Streetview is already there for Rome too. I beamed myself to the Pantheon, wandered through the little streets around it, and I was in Rome, and the Spring of 2009 is just okay with me. There was a young couple studying a map, having stepped aside for the Google camera car when studied from the next vantage point (another camera symbol inside the globes). The Google car must look pretty strange, by the way. One of the brilliant things is the clueless expression of the people gaping at it when it drives by in a narrow street. It even shines through the blur.
But seriously, it must be fun to teach geography or history using this - you can tell pupils to go watch what kind of shops there are in certain street, what things Italians are doing here or there, or ask them questions about the state of the Colosseum.
It's almost as good the little moving orbs on the Mosaic logo.

Four Square Features
Same as last edition, I forgot to tell these wonderful people that they've been featured. I may add some more later.