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April 08, 2005
Google Maps Rocks
The satellite image feature on Google Maps is my new favorite toy. You can type in an address and get a satellite picture of any location. The interface is fantastic -- Google did a really complex thing in a simple, elegant way, as usual. You can click and drag the map in any direction, switch from "map" to "satellite" at any time, and zoom in and out. I found the house I grew up in and navigated around town for a while (here's Thomas Edison's house). I spent countless hours of my childhood carpooling around but seeing everything from above finally helped me figure out where things actually are. The photos are detailed enough to show each parking lot space in shopping centers. Once you start finding places you can't stop. I went upstate next, then Derek found his various childhood houses, then I browsed around New York for a while, eventually branching out to Niagara Falls, Europe, and beyond. Here's the Grand Canyon.
The natural landscapes are stunning. I couldn't believe for a while that I was looking at the real thing -- in its actual scale. You can follow highways to different towns and gain a completely different perspective on a very familiar stretch of road. Changes in population density are easy to see. Topography can be guessed at if you zoom out a bit. When it finally dawned on me to head over to Europe and Asia and check out the rest of the world I found a huge stretch of desert covering the equator and gorgeous colors up in northern Canada. You can't zoom in much outside of the U.S., but the Pyrenees and Himalayas are clearly visible. Go south and you'll find bright white ice and what seem to be currents in the vast stretches of water. Here are a bunch of screenshots. This is my favorite, though:
Posted by csageday at April 8, 2005 12:43 AM