Google's satellite imagery software has truly changed the way we look at the globe. The application lets you zoom in on any part of the world and for some places, observe from a few meters away.

Google Earth not only displaces satellite images but it also includes terrains and sometimes 3D reconstruction of buildings. You can look for directions and businesses, just like in Google Maps and pinpoint areas or draw on maps straight in Google Earth.

Google Earth includes a very wide, and constantly increasing library of layers, which you can add to the map to enrich your experience. You'll find all sorts of information, from historical landscapes to national parks, regions where you can find endangered species or tourist spots. Google Earth will also showcase more news related information such as forest fires or tsunamis.

If stars is what you are into, turn to the Space mode and navigate among the constellations.

Moving around in Google Earth is incredibly intuitive thanks to the multiple navigation tools. Some areas will show less information than others, and Google Earth is known to use up a substantial amount of bandwidth, but it remains a fascinating piece of software

Google Earth is as of yet an unequalled application. Browse around the world, zoom into streets or go up and gaze at the stars. Millions of possibilities.

Download Google Earth 4.3 Beta in Softonic

I'm no geologist but I know a, excuse the pun, "gem" of a program when I see one and for any rock, mineral or geologist, this surely is one.

This comprehensive encyclopedia and research base contains just about everything there is to know about rocks, minerals and gems in an easy to search format with in depth descriptions and attractive images. If you need it customised to suit the needs or focus of your organisation, it can also do that too to reduce it's huge range and depth to something more manageable.

To be precise, the developers claim it has information on 600 minerals, 300 gems, 200 rocks, around 900 glossary items and a staggering 2100 pictures. Of course, it also features the entire periodic table with detailed info on each element, isotopes, allotropes and compounds. It also saves you valuable lab time because it tells you how these react and interact with each other. To cap it all, you can also find out about the geniuses and researchers that have pioneered the geological field and those that discovered each element, rock and gem.

Perhaps it can't replace Google or a good geological encyclopedia but for a free program, this is an impressive resource.

Download Earth's Core 1.0 Beta in Softonic

EasyGPS is the fast and easy way to transfer waypoints, routes, and tracks between your computer and your Garmin, Magellan, or Lowrance GPS. EasyGPS lists all of your waypoints on the left side of the screen, and shows a plot of your GPS data on the right. Use EasyGPS to back up and organize your GPS data, print maps, or load new waypoints onto your GPS for your next hike or geocaching adventure.

Download EasyGPS 2.8.5 in Softonic

Have you ever wondered what life is like on the other side of the world, just on a normal day like today? Stop wondering: now you can see it.

Satellite Live is an impressive mapping application with which you can view satellite imagery from any location on the planet, traveling from one place to another with just a mouse click and zooming in and out at your will. In a way it works very much like the popular Google Earth but with a slight difference: Satellite Live offers live, real-time images.

The program uses former military technology that has now been released to civilians. Software developers have quickly taken advantage of it, producing a striking piece of software like you'll never have seen before.

You're able to watch people actually walking down the street, parking their cars, buying groceries from the market stall or going for a walk in the park. Obviously the program only shows images from public and open areas so forget about peeking into somebody's bathroom to witness private stuff. Nevertheless, Satellite Live features an extraordinary zoom level with which you won't miss a single thing.

The program includes also a locating feature (which finds any place on Earth in a matter of seconds), an embedded screen capturing tool and navigational buttons to move around maps. However, there's no support for extra information layers yet.

Bear in mind that the level of detail may vary from one place to another, which means that populated areas such as New York, Los Angeles, London or Tokyo have more image quality than the Nevada desert or the Amazon jungle. In any case, Satellite Live is still an incredible application that opens a window to the world from your own computer.

Satellite Live lets you witness what's going on in any location on the planet, in real time. Though the level of detail may vary, it's still an impressive app with which to learn how life is in other parts of the world.

Download April Fools Satellite Live 1.0 in Softonic

Earth3D enables you to have your own personal planetarium at home. Simply copy this tool to your hard drive – no installation required – and be ready to enjoy great views from our planet while sitting right in front of your computer.

The program grabs spatial imagery from NASA, USGS, CIA and other resources and displays them on a simply-designed interface. You can change between different views and locations by using the categorized list on the left side of the interface, while viewing images themselves on the right side. While the virtual trip can be quite fun, bear in mind that this is no Google Earth, so don't expect to be able to see your home from outer space.

Earth3D features some interesting extras such as the ability to capture images or even record a small video while you're moving around the Earth or zooming in and out – just with your mouse. However, there's one big problem that prevented us from giving Earth3D a better score, and that is its incredible slowness when loading pictures.

Earth3D includes a beautiful collection of images from our planet in 3D perspective, but unfortunately takes way too long to display them.

Download Earth3D 1.0.4 in Softonic

If you're interested in Geography, you're going to like Sun Times.

Despite its confusing name, Sun Times works as a kind of world atlas of human geography, displaying all sorts of information about each country in the world. The first image you get is a world map with the current day/night light scheme, so that you can check the time of any location in the world. But that's not all: Sun Times also displays details such as sunrise and sunset times, latitude and longitude of the most important cities and even pictures of famous monuments and landmarks.

The program's extended options enable you to check on climate, astronomic data and airline routes, although sometimes the map is just too small for the amount of information to be displayed. In fact, sometimes Sun Times just overwhelms you with so much data.

On the downside, I missed the possibility to export all this information into an easier-to-read format. In spite of that, I found Sun Times very interesting, especially for educational purposes.

Despite its confusing interface, Sun Times is a great tool to learn more about many countries in the world and other geographical and astronomical data.

Download Sun Times 7.0 in Softonic

Earthquake 3D allows you to zoom and spin your way around the globe while viewing earthquakes in three dimensions. Display the awesome power of planet Earth as you watch it spin before you – revealing the true nature of earthquake geometry.

See at a glance up to seven days of global earthquake activity. Adjust and customize the display to see earthquakes in a variety of different ways. Filter earthquakes by size and time – then select from many display options that include quake indicators and map references. Earthquakes are shown in near real-time using the latest data from the USGS via the internet.

Broaden your understanding of earthquakes and plate tectonics today!

Download Earthquake 3D 2.43 in Softonic

QuikGrid is a program which will read in a set of scattered data points (x, y, z) which represents a surface. The program will generate a grid from this data and then display the surface as a contour map, or as a 3d representation. The left mouse button may be used to zoom in and pan about the display. The right mouse button may be used to display information about the generated grid coordinates and data points.

A 200 by 200 grid representing 15,000 data points may be gridded in less than 3 seconds on a 500 Mhz Pentium (actual generation times may vary depending on how the points are distributed). The grid may be displayed as a wire frame or as a hidden surface grid, optionally with colours.

The grid and contour lines may be output as a DXF file. The generated grid may be output to a file as a series of XYZ triplets, in the DXF 3DFACE format or as an ER Mapper Raster Dataset. QuikGrid may be used to view 1-degree USGS DEM files.

Download QuikGrid 5.3 in Softonic

The Schmap Player is a small and easy-to-use piece of freeware. Install it on your Windows PC, select from our growing range of interactive Schmap Guides and then... get Schmapping!

The Schmap Player dynamically integrates maps, photos, reviews and online content, giving you complete freedom to explore. Search the city, a neighborhood, or within a radius of your hotel - find sights of interest, restaurants to match your taste. Play, pause and fast-forward your way through one of our suggested tours, or your own custom selection of places of interest.

Take your bookmarked places or any other selection of guide content, then custom print a full-color guide, with maps, photos, reviews etc. Email a favorite place, explore with our cool map tools, click online for user reviews, web search, and driving directions.

Download Schmap Player 2.0 in Softonic

It is cross-platform, free and open-source version of NASA World Wind software. WW2D allows you to explore Earth using satellite imagery, topographic maps and image from other data sources also providing large placenames and boundaries database and allowing you to install community-made add-ons for even more information about our planet.

In basic configuration WW2D uses images from Blue Marble (1 km/pixel), LandSat7 (15 m/pixel), USGS Topo Maps, USGS Digital Ortho imagery, USGS Urban Area imagery. WW2D is designed to dynamically download needed data from internet, however you can download data you want for faster access and offline usage.

Download WW2D 0.99.88 RC1 in Softonic

Country Codes is a small database of country codes and additional information for more than 250 countries. It displays their location (continent), ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2-3 codes and ISO number as well as IDDD code and flag, NDD Code, Country Dialing Code, FIPS PUB 10-4 and TLD (Top Level Domain) code and the current time in the country, Distinguishing sign, IOC Code, ISO Currency Code and language abbreviation 3-char name.

The program provides checkboxes, that allow you to copy all or just selected information to the clipboard. In addition, it provides a handy link for each country that launches your browser with detailed information from the CIA World Fact Book and from the NationMaster website. It also provides options such as exporting to HTML file for printing or other uses.

You can even extract the name of country from numeric IP addresses using IP2Location database and program will automatically display the related information to that country. There is also a map of world showing you the content location of target country in world.

Download Country Codes 2.6.0 in Softonic

London is a big place, and if you don't have a plan for the few days that you go to stay there, you may just miss some of the most interesting or significant sights around the city. What's more, with a handy map you won't have any problems folding the paper back or with rips in the most inconvenient places!

The Schmap London Guide lets you really take advantage of your limited time and will recommend the best restaurants to eat, the best clubs to party and the best parks to chill out. Once you've had the holiday of your life, you can check for more guides and decide where your next destination will be.

Download Schmap London Guide 1.0 in Softonic

With Arm Map Explorer you can:

• Study physical and economic geography
• Explore the Earth surface using dynamic interactive maps
• View maps with a coordinate grid
• View state capitals, large cities, international airports, world landmarks
• Print and save map images

Arm Map Explorer recreates all the functionalities of Google Maps on your desktop and adds extras. Map Explorer lets you locate and view any place on the planet using dynamic interactive maps. These maps are draggable, meaning no need to click and wait for graphics to reload each time you want to view adjacent parts of a map. Viewing locations on maps in Map Explorer resembles the way you use a regular street map.

In addition to the features offered by Google Maps, Map Explorer allows you to view a map with a coordinate grid on it, get precise coordinates of any location on the map and move to a location based on specified coordinates. With the help of the object tree, you can instantly locate and view capitals of states, large cities, world landmarks, monuments, international airports and other locations. You can save a map as a file or print it to use on a trip. Map Explorer can help you study geography, both physical and economic. The program will display a satellite view of any location that you can zoom in and out and pan in any direction.

Download Arm Map Explorer 1.0 in Softonic

Lookup USA and Canada towns by ZIP, postal code or name and show them on a North American map. This helps you to check customer information, verify postal addresses, and reduce credit card fraud. Using the program is simple. Just enter a ZIP Code, and the program gives you the matching city, state, latitude, and longitude.

Download ZIP Pointer 1.0 in Softonic

Using the MapCreator software you can - easily and without cartographic knowledge - create physical maps of a very high quality. Physical maps emphasize the natural features of the earth's surface (mountains and valleys, vegetation, water...). The very great amount of geo-data necessary for this has been integrated in the software. Convince yourself of the qualities of MapCreator by looking at some maps.

Creating maps with MapCreator is really easy, the user interface has a completely graphic representation offering numerous possibilities for creating maps:

• The map extract can be freely adjusted. For a particularly fast setting of the map extract, ca. 100 pre-defined map extracts have been supplied additionally
• For representing land and sea, a ca. 2.3 GB data base for terrain heights, sea depths, vegetation and satellite photos is available. Land and sea can be represented in relief. The distinctness of the relief is adjustable
• Inland waters can be represented in very high quality. The edges of the water are drawn softly, the width of the river increases with its course. The quantity of water drawn can be adjusted
• In addition, borders, towns and a grid can be drawn on the map
• Any symbols required can be drawn on the map
• The maps created can be stored in the picture formats BMP, JPG, TIFF, PNG, TGA, PBM, PGM and PPM and can be further processed using all normal graphics software

Download MapCreator Free Edition 1.0 in Softonic