googleEarth is a great new product by the great trailblazer, google.

googleEarth was taken offline soon after its release was announced, for reasons best known to the dwellers of the googlePlex. It is available at the time of writing here

googleEarth is a derivative of Keyhole, a software that allowed users to zoom in to the world and check out high resolution images, roads and restaurant locations. The software and company were acquired by google in October '04

The software is complemented by the superb maps.google.com which also offers high res images of many cities around the world and mid-range res images of the rest of the planet. the site is so popular that is has led to the creation of a very active forum called googlesightseeing where people post images from their "travels" and discuss mysterious blacked out areas, hazy blue UFO's and

detailed help for googleEarth is available here