Google Earth 4 Beta Released

The good folks at Google have announced new versions of Google Earth and Google SketchUp. Google Earth 4 is available as a public beta, and is a Universal Binary application, bringing mac support to the mapping application for the first time. It features a new streamlined interface, support for objects built in SketchUp, and vastly improved satellite imagery coverage, which reportedly now covers approximately 25% of the Earth's surface.

The Google Earth 4 beta is available for download at http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html

Google SketchUp 5 adds support for textures, allowing you to apply photographs or other images to a building object to add more realism to your Google Earth 3D models. Google SketchUp is free and available for download at the Google Web site.

Google SketchUp 5 is available for download at http://sketchup.google.com/download.html