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from the it-only-costs-your-email-address dept.
Google has long offered a Pro version of Google Earth for $399 per year that includes some pretty cool extras not found in the free version. Now Rick Broida reports at Cnet that you can get Google Earth Pro absolutely free. All you have to do is download the installer, run it, then sign in using your e-mail address (as your username) and license code GEPFREE. Features include: Advanced measurements: Measure parking lots and land developments with polygon area measure, or determine affected radius with circle measure; High-resolution printing: Print images up to 4,800 x 3,200 pixel resolution; Exclusive pro data layers with Demographics and traffic count; Spreadsheet import: Ingest up to 2,500 addresses at a time, assigning place marks and style templates in bulk; and Movie-Maker: Export Windows Media and QuickTime HD movies, up to 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution. If you’ve ever been involved in a property dispute, you’ll know how acrimonious they can get. Google Earth Pro includes parcel data that definitively defines property boundaries. "Do you really need this? Probably not, as Pro was created with business/enterprise users in mind," writes Broida. "Let's be honest, [Google Earth Pro has] entertainment value that's virtually impossible to measure."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @10:47AM
It's got endless uses. I use the path tool to get the exact distance of long walks.
Everything that was added to Google Maps goes into Google Earth so you can get bus stops, directions, Street View, etc.
One of the community layers has notes added by people to the map. Everything from the mundane to the arcane.
KML/KMZ allow fly-through tours and other features to be added and shared.
It has views of the night sky, Mars, Moon, and the ocean. Some of that would be a better use for Stellarium [stellarium.org] but it's a good trend. Like with Earth you can add community annotations showing interesting astronomical features.
The pro version has demographics layers, heat maps, parcel data (may be more accurate than street address) and video export. Not much more than regular but good for some YouTubers.