Google Maps & Satellite

Tabor Street, Los Angeles. 'Whe-ma crib at', in the parlance of our times.

http://maps.google.com

Google recently purchased Keyhole Corporation, the makers of a very innovative product, Earthviewer 3D. I'd used it for a couple of months to download satellite imagery of sites and, data regarding contours and information on undulating terrains. The cool part was that there was imagery of Iraq, North America and Afghanistan! You could start by moving around in space and zooming onto any location in North America. Keyhole must've put together an image that was a couple of terrabytes in size for this Herculean task! Moreover it was in 3D. Which meant there was an actual 3D model with actual terrains and mounds as well as valleys to illustrate each area. The image was mapped onto this. Remote sensing and Satellite Imagery with 3D innovations. Brilliant!

The monthly fee structure varied from $45 to $6o per month! But after Google's purchase, they went to work with this information and created Google maps, a very interactive and much more enhanced version of other map generating utilities on the web like Mapquest, Yahoo maps and Mappoint. This morning while browsing, I came across a new button on the right hand top corner of the page; Satellite. It looks like Google has used the information from Keyhole and made all the data available for FREE!!! You can look at real satellite images of your apartment! Even get directions.

GOOGLE & MOZILLA ROCK!