Google Earth 4 out of beta

I su ose the camp of Googlia waiting in line for the Stevenote can be forgiven for fleeing the code mine they recently put the final touches on Google Earth 4, now out of beta.

Shiny new features in the Google Earth revision include:

• Higher quality terrain and building textures
• Expanded KML file su ort, including timestam and image overlays
• The sleek new UI, designed to stay out of your way as you flit hither and virtually yon
• Polygon a otation, shareable with other users

You can download the free GE4 a lication here. Upgrades to Plus ($20/year, higher-res prints, G track import, faster performance) and Profe ional ($400/yr, full-res image export and printing, movie export, GIS and readsheet import) are available. The paid versio also let you disable local busine advertising, which I'll admit I've never seen in GE; perha I'm not visiting the right neighborhoods.