Terraserver - Keyhole – WorldWind - Google Earth - Virtual Earth

CAUTION: This post is going to change reader's experience from personal to developer.

Terraserver – I remember using this service a long time back in 1999. This is probably the first web site to give earth view from satellites on internet, but sadly it could only show some parts of US and Canada and not all, particularly famous places. Service provided by Microsoft, yes Virtual Earth is not something which Microsoft did for first time, they did Terraserver a long back. Know some really interesting facts about Terraserver here, and yes developer friendly.

Keyhole – I remember using product from this company couple of years back, I liked it a lot, but again only US. I really liked software from this company, because they had support for developers as well. For example it allows me to develop application which can take data from the Keyhole calculate distance from one place to the other and can do lot of things.

WorldWind – This is one really cool application from NASA, which does same thing as what other applications do, application is developed using .NET and Managed DirectX and best part is its source code is available to download, so you can go to its web site and download its source code and play around with it, add more features of your own do whatever you want, but you can’t sell it. Interesting thing about WorldWind is that it’s from NASA, it has lots of things based on SPACE view, etc… really interesting to try at least once.

Google Earth – some of you might not have heard about the above applications or products or services, but am pretty sure, everyone have heard about Google Earth and have used it. Google actually bought Keyhole company and added a little features here and there in the product and called it Google Earth, interface remains the same, and almost everything is same, only few features here and there. Bad thing about Google Earth is it’s does not have any support for developers, good thing about it is that its fast. I just wonder why they removed developer support what keyhole used to give.

Virtual Earth – this is from Microsoft, after success of Google Earth, Microsoft decided to come in market with their own software to compete Google. And they named it Virtual Earth, it has more features than that of Terraserver + lots of things. Good thing about this product is that, it has lots of developer support, and bad thing its slow.

Now, you must be wondering why suddenly am writing about it. Well it appears to be my friend at Delhi wants to take admission in Mumbai college, and I am helping her with that, she asked for St. Xavier’s college stuff, etc… and as I was going to Churchgate I said I will get form for her, I knew that College is at Churchgate but not sure where exactly in Churchgate, so I opened up Google Earth and located the college, and yeah it’s great product, so I thought to write about it with all history stuffs.