The big G has answered chrisadas.com/node/868"my prayer. Google Earth was released a few hours ago today.

While lacking a lot of features available to the north america & UK version - it's basically a desktop Google Maps that you can rotate & tilt - it is considerably faster and you can add 'pins' onto the map and easily save locations for later uses. This was possible with Google Maps, but with a lot of XML wizadry involved. Now it's just click click click.