The Guardian’s John Lanchester, doesn’t get Google Earth. In a review of Google’s offerings, he writes:

Google Earth isn’t particularly useful, but it is brutally cool: you begin with a satellite view and gradually descend to earth, homing in with a level of detail that can give you a view of your own house (also, it turns out, of secret military installations).

Lanchester obviously uses Google Earth only for the eyecandy. But he should at least have remembered these two particular cases were Google Earth was particularly useful in just the past six months: Hurricane Katrina and the Pakistan Quake. And don’t get me started on the versatility of the network link and the boon this program is for geographic literacy in schools. It’s Lanchester who isn’t being particularly useful to his readers in this instance.