I too have bought into Google Earth deep enough, $400/year, to get the Professional level of utility plus the GIS import module for an additional $200. I have been able to: add TAB overlays like states that "snap" to Google's boundaries, add special multi-layered TAB projects, string GPS bread crumbs, and absorb legacy street TABs as well as SHP tiger layers. I have been able to add to my Profile and Places current events and imagery related to our emergency states via blog sites where the Google Earth-ites compete via cool hacks and POIs.
The cartographic control of points, lines and polygons (colors, lines, symbology and transparency) on TAB imports needs work and at this moment is limited to sets of 200 objects to a layer. They tell you Beta but its flawless so far. The system has had four if not five transparent updates since I subscribed must three months over ago. Additionally the registered user system provides for two configurations - laptop and office or home? And the more I return to places once visited a-far and discover new ones, what I am finding is that there is more and more spatialized and googlized information appearing in what I would describe as community hot-spots. These community hot spots grow around features added in the Professional version. I have also been provided trial periods for creation of fly-through movies and that was really neat. I want better control of my TAB overlays before I would start building fly-though movies to illustrate my on and off MIP project layers. This stuff is really exciting. It's likely to be a significant part of the WWW 3.0 "next-era" of the internet. Microsoft via an upgraded teraserver with a new API and implicit functionality with MapPoint/Office is also in play. Having used both Google's and Microsoft's earth products, I found Google's 3D oblique view and logical mouse action simply more fun. Google Earth content is IMHO far ahead of Microsoft's Virtual Earth in imagery outside of the US. The likelihood that Microsoft's earth offering permitting continued down-loaning of it's terraserver content would reserve their interests in the www 3.0 thing. "MSN Virtual Earth is a new Microsoft geo-spatial web site that integrates MSN Search, MapPoint Maps and Directions, and Microsoft TerraServer-USA into a single application." Compare Google Earth versus Microsoft Virtual Earth - http://www.jonasson.org/maps/ This ain't no average hack!!! Thanks Ryan Jonasson! FYI MidNight Mapper Aka neil
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