Fun: Google Tourism
Recently, Google Maps added world-wide satellite imagery. I've been taking shameless advantage to visit a bunch of places that I think might be interesting to look at from the air. After she saw what I was doing, my wife pitched in to help. Here are the fruits of our sojourns.
Eiffel Tower
The Great Pyramids (don't forget to visit the Great Sphinx too.)
The Arc de Triomphe
Fallujah
Niagra Falls
The Grand Canyon
Forbidden City
Epcot at DisneyWorld
Statue of Liberty
Golden Gate Bridge
Mt. Everest
Buckingham Palace
St. Louis Arch
Washington Monument
The Pentagon
Hollywood Sign
Mt. Saint Helens
SeaWorld
Bristol Renaissance Faire
Cape Canaveral (Shuttle Launch Pad?)
Area 51
Red Square
Disappointing Trips:
Maybe at some point in the future these will be worth visiting, but right now you can't get in close enough to matter for one reason or another.
Sydney Opera House (inadquate photography)
Stonehenge (inadquate photography)
Capitol Building (deliberately fuzzed, sound dumb?).
Mount Rushmore (bad angle)
Taj Mahal (inadequate photography)
Undiscovered Country:
Great Wall of China (I can't find a section that's been adquately photographed.)
Time Travel:
Obviously all of this stuff wasn't photographed yesterday, and here's a few locations that show the time lag.
Twin Towers Site (before new construction)
Cape Girardeau's Mississippi Bridge (The new bridge is now finished, the old one gone.)
Other Lists of Locations:
Assorted US locations
posted by Glenn @ 12:57 PM
11 Comments:
I could find my parent's house (starting from the Washington Monument); the level of detail is pretty good!
Hey, I can see your house from here! (Albeit not mine--not enough detail in our corner of the States.)
I know you had linked to this before, but I continue to be amazed at how good their interface is. I should check out the veracity and credibility of their directions...
And I think that's one thing that makes it so cool. It's strangely egalitarian, in a way, that the satellite photography of your parent's house, or my house, or anyone's house, is as good as that of Niagra Falls, or the Statue of Liberty. In what other context would that even be possible?
I was trying to see if I could calculate when the Eiffel Tower picture was taken, but it assumes that the grid is really N/S oriented. I think it is, so I figure it was about 3PM in the spring sometime.
Also, want to see some intentionally blurred out areas? Check out the Niagara Falls pic, scroll up to the American falls (boy did we lose on that deal!) and go directly east. You'll see a very obvious rectangle that is out of focus. I haven't been able to identify it, but it sort of sticks out, doesn't it?
Actually, I don't think that area is deliberately blurred, just the result of the sort of patchwork quilt of arial photography that's used. If you zoom back, you can see that this region's high-quality photography is patchy. I'm guessing on whatever the recent passes were, they just didn't catch everything, and the spot you're looking at is what remains from a much older set of photos.
For instance, here's a batch of good photography amidst a sea of the older, crappy stuff:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=42.159519,-78.718758&spn=0.099967,.115459&t=k&hl=en
The pictures are great fun, but I can't wait until I can move through them once Google launches Google Earth.
Still seems an odd rectangle. I like conspiracies though.
Oh, and you've got the White House mixed up with the Capitol building (which is shown at your link). The White House you can see clearly (though what seems to be a bit TOO clear - nice clean roof!) by pointing to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington DC.
How do you find the grid location and focus to lock in locations you scroll by?
Ick. The photoshopped roofs are almost as bad as the deliberate fuzzing. I've fixed the label in my post. If I understand your question correctly, you're looking for the "link to this page" link in the upper right corner of the interface.
I like Google Maps alot. Your collection is very nice. Others may wish to make up their own. How about a list of MLB ballparks? Here's one of our St Louis Cardinals:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=st+Louis,+MO&ll=38.623585,-90.192754&spn=0.004811,0.006625&t=k&hl=en
cool but when I put my parents address in they got it wron by about 4 houses and it is an OLD shot as I could see the tree that has been dead a few years.
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