Explore the world with your Mac from your sofa!
World Explorer lets you see the imagery of different cities. The application can detect your location or you can manually input one, and it will display points of interest near the location that is active, and you can access Wikipedia articles about those points of interest, all from the same window.
The map at the bottom of the screen behaves just like the map that you would find if you opened Google Maps on your web browser. You can zoom in and out, pan around and change the map type from terrain to satellite. Wikipedia articles are opened on the right-pane.
I used a city of the U.S.A. to test the app. World Explorer listed quite a few points of interest. I was amazed to see that I didn't know some of those places. When I clicked on them, the map was centered on that location and an article was shown.
There is also a "premium" version which comes with extra features like photos and more points of interest.
Pros
- Automated and manual input
- Exploration mode
- Support for different types of maps
- Interesting points of interest
Cons
- Fails to load a map sometimes
It proves to be useful when you are preparing for a journey: it is always helpful to know something about the place you are going to beforehand.