Google has a fantastic, new, free program for those of you with a broadband connection. It's called Google Earth. And it's just flat amazing.

First, how you get Google Earth

Getting Google Earth is simple. Just go to google,com, and click on More When the next screen opens, scroll down until your see Earth in the Tools category. When you click on Earth,,, a window titled Google Earth Explore, Search and Discover will open Scroll down to and click on Get Google Earth (Free Version). Click on Download Google Earth and follow the directions to install the program on your computer.

What you will see

When Google Earth opens, you will see Earth as seen from space, a search box and two panels labeled Places and Layers. You can ignore these for now and just type in an address in the search box. You need to include, the street address, city and state, with these three elements separated by commas. For example, 1108 Walnut St, Omaha, NE.

After you type in the address and your house might be a good place to start Google Earth will rapidly zoom in on the address just as if you were zooming in from outer space. It will stop about 1,000 feet above the address you searched on. You can zoom in even further using the + and buttons at the bottom of the program, but the picture may eventually become blurry, depending on what resolution your display is set to. (Note: Be sure to check your display's settings to make sure they match Google's recommendations.)

What happens next

After you've zoomed in on your house (or whatever address you typed in the search box), you can pick another address or a place such as the Grand Canyon. Google will do fly over to the new address or location just as if you were flying over the globe in a very fast jet plane.

Once you get the hang of it, you can go to and zoom in on locations all over the U.S. Or the world for that matter. You can even save addresses or places to make it easy to get back to them in the future.

Google Earth is just a kick. Go ahead and try it. I'm sure you'll find it's literally hours of fun.

Douglas Hanna

Douglas Hanna is a retired advertising and marketing executive. Over the course of his 30-plus year career, he created sales-winning advertising and marketing plans for a wide variety of clients. Hanna writes extensively about family finances, old time radio and the Internet. He is also the webmaster of a site devoted to a new technology called HD Radio.