So, I may be a little late to the party, but I really REALLY love GoogleEarth. Mostly because I can stalk my new home with frightening realism.
Thus far, I have “walked” up the street I will soon be travelling every day and explored a little of the town at large. I discovered the University’s store, the Bank of Scotland, and a cute bakery that is conveniently located next to a coffee shop.
The only drawback to my new obsession with GoogleEarth is that I gave myself a large dose of motion sickness with the street view. From now on, I’ll have to limit myself to small sessions a day exploring Aberdeen via the virtual world. I’m very excited about this tool, though. It definitely gives me a much larger appreciation for the bravery of those people in history that made such a long, arduous trip via ships from Scotland to the Americas; they did it basically blind. And here I am, their descendant, making the same trip in reverse, hundreds of years later, with incredible insight into where I’m heading.