Google Earth 5.0: Oceans, the Past…Even Mars

I’m at the California Academy of the Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for the event at which Google is unveiling version 5.0 of Google Earth–which appears to be available for download right now. So far, the event is interesting, inspiring, and, then–but wireless connectivity here is super-spotty, so I’m going to keep this brief and tell you more later.

This new version of Google’s amazing digital atlas looks to be packed with new stuff: For the first time, it includes most of the planet, in the form of its oceans. There’s also a timeline slider that lets you reference old satellite imagery as well as the newest available stuff. And Google has mapped Mars, including Google Street View-like photos.

Here’s Al Gore, who’s here, and understandably excited about Google Earth in general and the new version’s power as an educational tool in particular–I shot it in the dark from the back row, so it’s kinda pointillist. More about Google Earth 5.0 soon, but if you download and try the new version, let us all know what you think…

Apple Store Traffic Flat, But Sales Are Down

Apple has taken quite a bit of pride in its successful retail operation, and rightly so. It has grown at a rate not seen by other electronics outlets as of late, and sales have been consistently higher every quarter.

Not so for the holidays. Traffic was essentially flat in the fourth quarter, down 1.8 percent. The real drop was in sales, falling 17.4 percent and showing that consumers are buying less, Needham analyst Charlie Wolf found.

“Consumers aren’t in a spending mood,” he quipped to Barron’s (subscription only).

Barron’s Mark Veverka also makes an astitute observation: Apple’s struggles at retail could reverberate. Malls will feel the difference as these stores have become attractions, bringing in new consumers that may have otherwise not shopped the mall.

Another effect is as Apple sells less, it produces less. This sends shockwaves backward into its whole supply chain. Companies that have produced iPod parts know this all too well: an adjustment in Apple’s ordering can cause them to completely miss their own financial goals (it’s happened).

While its certainly alarming to shareholders that one of Apple’s primary revenue drivers are falling upon hard times, consider this: Apple can afford some loss at retail.

As Doug McIntyre at BloggingStocks put it, these stores serve almost as a showroom of sorts for the company: “As long as Apple’s revenues are improving, there is hardly reason to complain,” he argues. I can’t argue with that.

Good Grief!

It’s Monday morning, and I’m blushing: Over at ZDNet, Jason Hiner has posted a list of “The Ten Best Techies Worth Following on Twitter.” It includes eight folks who I follow, one who I didn’t know about (but will add to my list), and….me. At #1. I’m startled and honored. And I’ll try to rip off Jason’s idea soon by providing a list here of some of the tech Twitterers who I find consistently intelligent, interesting, and entertaining.

People who haven’t quite figured out Twitter yet sometimes ask me why I spend so much time on it, and the answer, of course, is because it’s fun. I Tweet mostly to amuse myself–but this is a fabulous egoboost. Thanks, Jason!

Windows 7 on a MacBook Pro

[NOTE: 2/2/09 - This is an updated version of the original post from Sunday.]

I am writing this for those of you who may be daring enough to attempt an install of Windows 7 on your Macs. Yes, it may be blasphemy, but even us Macheads are a little curious sometimes, right?

Anyway (to me) the install was quite painless. What you want to do is open up your Applications, then select Utilities. Open up Boot Camp Assistant and Follow the instructions. Even though it asks for a XP or Vista disk, the Windows 7 disc will work.

Just make sure you select the partition labeled BOOTCAMP! Any other one could wipe your Mac OS clean.

The install went without a hitch, but I ran into serious problems in getting any drivers installed. All the instructions I’ve seen (here and here) seem to suggest the Boot Camp installer on the Leopard disk works fine.

Not for me, I got this:

That doesn’t seem to be happening with other folks, however. The instructions don’t provide for this. I’m wondering whether or not the version of my disk (10.5.1) may have something to do with it: the Boot Camp Installer is different as its an earlier version.

There is a way to fix this however if Boot Camp is failing. It involves taking the following steps:

1) Create a folder on the hard drive. For the sake of convenience, I placed it on my desktop for easy access. Name it “BootCamp” or whatever you’d like.
2) Open up the CD’s contents. For you Mac folks, this process in Windows 7 is Computer > right click on DVD drive > Open.
3) Copy the entire contents to that folder you have just created.
4) Download this file: Bootcamp.msi.
5) Place that downloaded file in the Apple directory of the copied version of the DVD, it should overwrite the previous one.
6) Run the setup.exe file. Boot Camp should install properly.

In some cases, there has been reports that this has not worked. Let us know if it doesn’t for you. But it should for most.

So far all features appear to work normally, including sound. I have also noticed the residual benefit of a much quicker load time coming into Windows.