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Google Earth Pro Now Available Free
HughPickens.com writes Google has long offered a Pro version of Google Earth for $399 per year that includes some pretty cool extras not found in the free version. Now Rick Broida reports at Cnet that you can get Google Earth Pro absolutely free. All you have to do is download the installer, run it, then sign in using your e-mail address (as your username) and license code GEPFREE. Features include: Advanced measurements: Measure parking lots and land developments with polygon area measure, or determine affected radius with circle measure; High-resolution printing: Print images up to 4,800 x 3,200 pixel resolution; Exclusive pro data layers with Demographics and traffic count; Spreadsheet import: Ingest up to 2,500 addresses at a time, assigning place marks and style templates in bulk; and Movie-Maker: Export Windows Media and QuickTime HD movies, up to 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution. If you've ever been involved in a property dispute, you'll know how acrimonious they can get. Google Earth Pro includes parcel data that definitively defines property boundaries. "Do you really need this? Probably not, as Pro was created with business/enterprise users in mind," writes Broida. "Let's be honest, [Google Earth Pro has] entertainment value that's virtually impossible to measure."
The "GEPFREE" password wasn't announced, and there were issues with the licensing site
I did a malware scan (3 common engines) on the file and it checks out, the thing works for free.
Sadly not Linux.
They use Linux on all their servers, they build Android on top of Linux, but they can't be bothered giving back Linux support on their products.
How pathetic is that?
The truth is that the definitions of the property boundaries are exactly accurate, i.e., 100' N/S and 50' E/W. The issue is that how the surface features interact with those property boundaries is only an approximation.
I work daily with this using a GIS systems. We have a custom-crafted map where an expert spent a lot of time doing what's called "rubber-sheeting", meaning stretching and squeezing the photo layer to make it line up as closely as possible with the lot lines layer, and it's still plus or minus a few feet, more than enough to preclude using it to settle a property dispute.
The ONLY way to settle a boundary dispute is to hire a surveyor. Be precise in what you want, you want a boundary line located, you do NOT want a "survey" which is more more complicated and much more expensive.
https://dl.google.com/earth/cl...
Typical of americans, Google Earth pro, but the pro features are only for USA,
That is surprising, I agree.
An alternate suggestion if you want to keep the existing System Preferences: right-click ('ctrl-click') on the binary to bring up the context menu, then select 'Open". This will invoke the same warning, but will also allow you to authenticate -- allowing this binary to run (here and thereafter) without complaining.
As a data custodian for our county cadastral data I can attest that using the data for ANY purpose other than tax assessments is not recommended. Parcel data is meant to track ownership. It is not meant to be an accurate representation of survey data. It never has, and never will. Just because it "looks" ok when you overlay it with an aerial photo doesn't mean it should be used for any determination of property lines. This is why every time you buy a house a professional surveyor comes out and re-checks everything. We all know the house didn't move, but surveyors can't even agree on a the same location of a corner marker. Where do you think all this error goes when you try and do a countywide fabric of parcels? For a kick, ask your county assessor for the parcel line data.. including COGO attributes. Then look in amazement as your 120 foot property line is actually 118.5 feet on the map to make it fit inside of decades of mapping error. I've tried to reach out to Google many times to offer an update of our data to reflect new subdivisions. I never got a response. The product looks pretty and functional until you actually try and do something that matters with it.
So, in other words, if I'm having a property dispute especially one involving the court system, I DO want a survey. When court is involved, the person who's being cheap is the one who tends to lose. Ask all those people who thought they were smart enough to defend themselves in court, or who thought the court-provided lawyer was actually going to do anything.
You want a surveyor to be involved in ANY property issue, whether it goes to court or not. If you want to build a fence, remove a tree near a lot line, whatever, you should have a thorough survey done to know where your boundary lines are for your property, if one hasn't been done before you bought the property. Surveyors have centimeter or less accuracy GPS units and can tell you EXACTLY where your lot lines (and corners) are within that accuracy. We've never had that level of accuracy before GPS and it has had a major impact on real estate.
I cannot tell you how many people I've known over the years that have put fences in (in particular) and found out a few years later when the property next to them goes up for sale and a modern survey is done that their fence is on the neighbors property. It costs thousands to get that fixed, legally. I won't even go into the idiots that built additions near lot lines and ended up on the wrong side or too close to the line and had to demolish or "emend" the addition. Nightmare.
I was able to prove out just now that the speed hump my friend in highschool's parents had the city put in front of their house isn't justified - the neighborhood street in front of our house had way more traffic and was only half a mile from them.
Speed humps aren't justified at all, but the justification used is that they make people slow down, not that they make them choose another route. One ways make people choose another route. Speed humps just make people buy crossovers. Then they can comfortably drive over them at speed, and the only people who suffer are people who don't buy cars which are excessively tall.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sketchup Pro is not a Google product, so begging Google to release it for free is not likely to go anywhere. Now why Trimble bought Sketchup from Google in the first place I'll never know. Setting up Google Earth Pro to be free *before* Google sells it off is probably a good move for users. Too bad they didn't do that with Sketchup before they sold it.
"Google Earth Pro includes parcel data that definitively defines property boundaries."
No, Just no.... I work in GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and I can GUARANTEE that a vast majority of the property lines displayed in the program do not "definitively defines property boundaries". Some may not be far off, some may not be too bad, most will only be in the ball park and some will be horribly off, the only way to be sure one way or another would be a title search and a survey and even then once in a while things can go wrong. Property description is insanely complicated, in my area the property records go back into the 1840s and technically to be sure someone has to trace and map every sale from now back to then. Since that is extremely time consuming most title companies these days only trace it back 40-60 years and then rely on insurance to pick up the tab if the issue exists further back. Most GIS maps don't try to do ANY of that, they grab the tax records or maps if they exist and digitize (scan them, electronically rubber sheet them to a rough geographic base and then draw some digital lines on top of the scans hand drawn ones) them making your average digital property line map at best 5-50' accurate. Even with organizations that go the extra distance and rebuild the parcel layer off of certified orthophotos (3' accuracy for 90% of surveyed points) you're only improving to about 5-10' accuracy. In a very few rare circumstances you may get some parcels where employees actually went out to properties that happened to be surveyed and then you're probably getting sub-centimeter accuracy for about 0.00000000002% of the parcels.
" Then look in amazement as your 120 foot property line is actually 118.5 feet on the map"
Even surveyors can be off by that much, I've seen surveys in the 80s that when resurveyed with modern equipment the surveyor has to note on his map something to the effect of "Measured: 121.51' Recorded as: 119.2'". That said you are very right using electronic parcel maps for "definitive property boundaries" is completely idiotic. They can be a good reference depending on how they were built but it will be a LONG time (think a century or so) before there is any chance of them being used for property boundary determination.
and those in the us can go to the usgs national map viewer and download high res orthoimagery (aerial imagery modified to the correct coordinates unlike google earth) for most of the us for free already. and it includes other interesting data sets like elevation, ground cover etc.
LOL, http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/... must be getting hammered right now. It done got /. to death.