There is no Google Earth app yet for the iPhone, but Earthscape has released the next-best thing: Earthscape Basic. The app is now available in the iTunes store for $10, and puts a little globe in your pocket that you can spin around and zoom into specific locations. It shows where you are based on your GPS coordinates, and highlights locations with Wikipedia entries (and lets you read those entries as well). As cool as it looks, though, it is less functional than a preview last May suggested it would be.
Frank Taylor at the Google Earth Blog takes the app through the paces in the video above. As he points out, there is no search capability, support for standard KML data sets, or accelerometer support. So you don’t really get much more out of the app than you can already get from Google Maps on the iPhone (which comes with a pretty awesome satellite view and search). As a standalone app, you can spin the earth and scroll through landscapes faster than waiting for Google Maps to update its data over the air. Is that really worth $10? (No, but I still want it).
Update: Earthscape CEO Tom Churchill says that the app will gain more features through future upgrades:
The application itself is quite basic (hence the name), but will see a number of feature additions over the next several months, as we include suggestions for improvement from users and look to take advantage of what a virtual globe can do in a mobile context.
He also notes that while the app maintains a cache of recently seen landscape “tiles,” up to thousands of them, it does rely on the network to download new information. So it is dependent on the network for its performance, and works best with WiFi and 3G.
Isn’t the next best thing Google Maps? Yes, yes, it is.
TechCrunch really needs to stop all the lame iPhone posts. I don’t give a crap neither do most people. This is not a “start-up”. Please spare us the iCircleJerk.
why do you guys keep posting these sh**ty vids from iphone
i know there must be ways to port video from iphone for better quality
Please… enlighten us.
And what abot the fixes coming in September?
http://vishtech...iphone-app.html
One of the best IPhone applications i’ve seen! This must be a geo week on TechCrunch. First, urban mapping, then geo location platform for gears and now this.
Cheers,
Andrei
http://www.umapper.com
Its amazing to witness the transformation that iPhone is bringing to the mobile world. Mobile web surfing has been there for years but iPhone has for the first time bought the true mobile web experience.
Its location based services is one the best I have read about.
I think I really should get one for me. I cant wait.
http://mydating...e.blogspot.com/
Now that $h!T is sick!!! Imagine that with GPS on to tell you where you are and if you have frineds close by!? That’s a killer app and deadly if pushed to the limit!
We’re finally getting our company iPhones at Smibs Inc in Canada on Monday and I look forward to play with this app.
Or imagine as you walk by this billboard it is intelligent enough to know the people nearby using the location services… filter out a common preference that majority of people in that range like and display it on the Billboard
http://mydating...e.blogspot.com/
Or you can just go to the web version through safari, which is free. I know… BORING! hahahaahah
There is no way the demo was done over 3G. But even over wifi, it is pretty cool but still useless
.
If you bother to read the 2 reviews posted on itunes about this app you’d see that they both bag it and recommend against buying it.
Doesn’t Maps.app do the same thing (just without the useless 3D globe) already? Why would anyone pay $10 for this?
http://www.twinverse.com this is the futur killer app for iphones!!! not only wikipedia entries but people represented by avatars moving around the globe. Iphone + Twinverse reaching the mixed reality dream!!!
The long-term development.