Internet Maps
Yahoo! News covered a story about Search Engines Going Far Beyond Maps today. The whole Internet mapping thing is interesting to me. My history has allowed me to see detailed images taken from satellites before most people could even conceive that it was possible.
I find it a little bit funny when I read statements like this one. “I think there are going to be privacy issues, no doubt about it — somebody’s going to feel uncomfortable with it,” said Charlene Li of Forrester Research. Yes, I am sure that there will be plenty of folks screaming because big bother and the rest of the planet will be able to see what really goes on back there on the South 40 of the ranch. What is funny is that big brother has had the technology for a long time and no one even know realized it.
The truth is that most of the publicly available data is not of much use for doing anything other than what the article talks about like . I am just pleased to see that the data is not real time and does not show the degree of detail that a terrorist might be able to use. Most of the potential terrorist hot spots that I came up with off of the top of my head had very little or no graphics available in any degree of detail. This was talked about in the article, but it is much easier understood if I show you.
This first picture is a look at my house using Google Maps.
Now here is a look at the same location (My house) using Google Earth.
How current is the database of pictures on Google Earth? The following picture is of the Cooper River Bridge in Charleston, SC. The new bridge is represented int he picture as the two pylons in the water just below the tow old bridges. The new bridge actually opened for public use in July 2005. The demolition of the old bridges has been underway for quite a while now so the bridges shown in the picture below are not even in use any more.
January 18th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Have you tried this one, yet? I found it to be quite a lot better than Google’s.