Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Graphics Cards

As if Street View for Rome wasn't enough, now the Google Earth team has rolled out an ancient Rome layer:



I've often said that I wished I could redo college with Google Search, but I'd like to amend that to include Google Earth as well. Please? It's like flying through the model of Ancient Rome during the time of Constantine that I made the pilgrimage out to the Museo della Civilta Romana in EUR to visit.

Anyway, get ready to time travel, but you'll need a pretty hefty system ("Dual-Core 2.0Ghz CPU + 3GB RAM + High End GPU with 512 MB RAM Suggested") to get there.

Street View hits Italy!

Google Street View for Italy just launched and It's giving me a serious case of Rome-sickness. The official blog post has some great views of the city, so I'll share a few of my favorite non-historic places. For starters, I can see a view down the street to the John Felice Rome Center where I lived, studied, and worked for three years:


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(You can click to zoom or drag to look around on all of these shots)

The "Green Bar" where we used to go for coffee and chocolate croissants:


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OK, I can't resist--here's my favorite church (architecture-wise),
The Basilica of St. Giovanni in Laterano:


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And Marie's favorite,
The Basilica of St. Maria Maggiore


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I could go on for hours, so I'll close out with the greatest gelateria in the world, Cremeria Monteforte (run by my good friend Roberto):


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Drag the image around 180 degrees to see that it's facing the side of the Pantheon. Oh man, now I'm seriously craving a big cup of Roberto's Cioccolato Semifreddo.