Friday fun for Mar 9, 2007

This week, I've got a single post for you, which I found via Digg.

It's part of something called the Google Earth Community, which is where people who are using Google Earth have created tours that you can take of interesting locations. If you've never played with Google Earth, I highly recommend downloading it and fooling around. You'll be amazed how much fun flying around the world can be.

Here's where you can go and read about the Google Earth program and download a free copy. Go ahead...we'll wait.

But even if you don't have a copy of the program, you'll enjoy browsing through this file, which features pictures and descriptions of the most extreme places on Earth.

Mind you, if you do use Google Earth, just load it up, then download the file I've linked to, by clicking on the "View in Google Earth" button. When you launch that file, it will take you on a round-the-world tour of some of the most extreme places in the world. At each stop, you'll see little marks that you can click on and view pictures that people have taken themselves, then uploaded to Google Earth. It's a pretty cool little community they're building.

There's lots more to do, I'm sure, although I haven't used the program much. But here's a link to something called the Google Earth User Guide which has a lot of tips for getting started and using the program.

The file I've pointed you to is a series which features snippets and photos of the earth's extremes. For example:

Mt. Baker, Washington : Snowiest Place On The Earth
The highest seasonally cumulative precipitation of snow ever measured was on Mount Baker, Washington during the 1998–1999 season. Mount Baker received a staggering 29 m of snow, thus surpassing the previous record holder, Mount Rainier, Washington which during the 1971–1972 season received 28.5 m of snow.

Karl-Marx-Hof, Vienna, Austria : Longest residential building on the Earth
The Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna, Austria holds the distinction of being the longest single residential building in the world at over one kilometer in length (1100m) and spanning four tram stops.

Jack Hills, Australia : Oldest piece of earth on the Earth
The Jack Hills are located in the Narryer Gneiss Terrane of the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia, and comprise an 80 km long northeast-trending belt of folded and metamorphosed supracrustal rocks.This is the oldest piece of earth on the earth

Mount Thor, Canada : Greatest Vertical Drop on the Earth
Mount Thor is a mountain in Auyuittuq National Park, on Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada, this is the greatest vertical drop on the earth.

Many of the accompanying photos are impressive.

Enjoy!

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