Google Earth
 

From the makers of Google Maps comes their latest toy... Google Earth!

I've been playing with this software for about an hour now and it is amazing. I can zoom close enough into Disneyland that I can see people. You do have to download free software to use the program but it is pretty damn cool.

Do you see me? ;)

It is really cool, but the maps are pretty old. I zoomed in on my house, and while my room addition is there (4.5 years old), my driveway has my old white F150 in the driveway, which I haven't had for 2.5 years.

That's part of what always makes these sattelite image maps fun for me...trying to see how closely I can pinpoint when the images were taken.

Thinking about that further, I was actually wrong. I haven't had my F150 for 3.5 years. So it's narrowed to between June 2001 and July 2002.

We know the shot of our neighborhood (on the web-based Google satelite map, don't know about Google Earth) is from between Feb.-April of 2003 based on the progress of construction of the shopping center around the corner from us.

I can't tell which car is in the driveway of my house. But, I think this was taken after we had the new roof put on.

A funny thing - I was cruising around Napa - where I grew up, and I looked at my old high school. Happens to be where two maps come together and they are offset so all the building look split in half and shifted a couple hundred feet. I wonder how many maps comprise this whole thing?

I don't think the image of Disneyland is quite that old. Space Mtn is almost completely white, with one section yet to be completed. That wouldn't be more than a year or two.

I recall reading somewhere that the purpose of using older images is for security reasons. If they were up to date, it could be a pretty handy tool for someone with alterior motives.

LOL, no. Maybe you were at the AP lounge at the time. ;)

Ive been playing with this program for a couple months now, it's so fun! The photo taken of my home was last fall. You can totally see the changing leaves and such. I just love maps!

There is a box you can click on the left hand scroll down screen that will show lines on the maps that tell you when the pictures of that paticular area you are looking at were taken too fyi.

Pisser

I was wandering around in Google Earth today paying a visit to Hover Dam. They recently built a by-pass so that traffic can no longer drive across the bridge. I was thinking what a bummer that was but after seeing what they built.... I REALLY want to take a drive on this E-Ticket of a highway.

Spoilered for size and to help build drama.

So have the images been updated?

The bridge doesn't appear to be hovering as well as it was designed to.

Is that a trick photo, it can't really look like that!

Google's image processing algorithms are notorious for getting very very confused by bridges, especially bridges over areas of large elevation change. If you just google "Google earth bridges" you get a whole lot of similarly amusing results.

What he said. In fact the first result for his query returned a different photo of this same bridge.

It really looks more like this...

Phew, I feel better now!

I like the first one. Whee!