raveneye

I'm a map fanatic, I admit . . . .

Just in case any of you other map lovers haven't seen this site yet check it out:

http://terraserver-usa.com/

Type in any address in the US, and get an aerial photo and USGS topo map.

raveneye

I just typed in my parents' address, looked at the "urban areas" photo, and saw my car parked in the driveway.

Now, that car was supposed to be stored in the garage. My dad was driving it apparently that day in 2002 when the satellite took that photo . . . . .

StormBerlin

Wow, I found all my old addresses... the one in cali was taken right after the big earthquake when i was still living there. kinda weird...

__________________
"if anal sex could get a girl pregnant i'd be tits deep in child support" Arcane

bigelow

That's pretty cool! I too like to work with maps (GIS analyst). I wish we could get data like that here in Canada. Government's got everything tied up too tight.

__________________
Never eat anything bigger than your head.

ARTelevision

Reminder.

Posting links without significant discussion waters this forum down to a shadow of its former self. This should be well known by now.

__________________
create evolution

raveneye

OK, point taken.

I'll offer a little verbiage, since I started the thread. I'll tell you a little story about this little creek that you can see on the terraserver site here:

http://www.terraserver-usa.org/image...+beach%7cOR%7c

My grandmother lived in a little beach house just south of here, and I used to spend summers there, sometimes with my older brother. He was a hippy then, and I was his adoring little brother.

We would walk on the railroad tracks down to the creek (see the tracks in the photo?). I remember we would throw rocks from the trestle, see who could hit a target in the creek below.

One day we heard a whistle. It was the Union Pacific and we were sitting on the outside of the trestle, legs hanging down on a lazy July afternoon. The train wasn't coming very fast, so I just got up and ran off the trestle and over onto the side of the embankment.

Rick just sat there, looking over at me with a stupid grin on his face.

The train came chugging slowly over the trestle and he was obscured on the other side. It seemed like hours went by.

Finally the caboose rambled past, but bro was nowhere to be seen. What the hell? Did he fall off ? ? ? Jump off? Where was he?

Then there was a anguished voice behind me "Help me, I'm dying, please" And I spun around and there Rick was, guffawing behind me. He had just walked around on the 6-foot margin of the trestle, and underneath the bridge, and out on the other side while I was sitting there catching flies watching the train.

End of silly story, circa 1968.

Anybody else want to post a location and tell a story about it?

I dunno if I'm the only one, but I think this technology is absolutely amazing. Just 15 years ago, people would have thought you were a lunatic if you said that soon anybody will be able to see an aerial photo of just about any address in the country at the click of a button.

It's a map of my life.

betula

Nice story, Raveneye. At my old job, we purchased .7 meter resolution color satellite photos of our campus. We found out the photo was taken on tax day (april 15th). Anyways, one of the workers finds his house on the photo, and sees his roommate's car there. Judging by the shadow angles, we determine the time of the photo, and he knows that his roomie was supposed to be in class then. It was funny when he talked to his roomie, getting the "how'd you know?" answer.

I love maps and aerial photos. I like to decorate my apartment with them. They are informative pieces of art in my opinion.

raveneye

I agree. They change the way we think about the world. They give us new insights into our life and our environment, allow us to see things we could never otherwise see, they bring us closer to other people, cultures, ideas, they make us conscious of local ecology, they add beauty and order to our lives, give us an abiding sense of place.

A map is worth a thousand words

FloydianOne

Have you guys checked out www.keyhole.com ? Its was recently purshased by google... however ive been using it for awhile. Pretty much a virtual globe that you can move around with your mouse zoom in zoom out... and it contains color satellite images of just about every major city and the surrounding areas in the world. If you guys want to PM me your address or something you want to see, ill post an example of it. I can spend hours on this thing. If enough people use it we can start posting actual hyperlinks that open up the globe and take you to the locatoin.

Go download the demo and youll see what i mean.

Lockjaw

My old neighborhood's pic is 10 years old and there has been a ton of construction in the area since then. I wish there was a way I could get an updated picture of the area.

Cycler

It is great to look how my neighborhood, heck the town has changed in 10 years since the last photo was taken. The house where one of my good friends lives now was simply an open field. Great link. Off to check some more addresses and this has been bookmarked.

__________________
"I'm not even supposed to be here today."

"I assure you we're open."

troit

Actually very cool... I wonder how good the pictures are if you order them...

__________________
I've yet to dephile myself...

raveneye

Floyd, Keyhole is amazing, I'd never seen it, thanks for the link.

A couple questions: if google has bought the site, does that mean they'll be incorporating the aerial photos into google maps? I assume that's in the works, which will be fantastic.

I notice that the resolution in Keyhole for small towns is much lower than in the terraserver. Any idea why? That seems a bit strange, since they seem to be using the same database.

RogueHunter65

Wow, what a sweet find. Thanks

__________________
I suffer from amnesia and deja vu at the same time... I think I have forgotten this before

FloydianOne

Im not sure if google will be incorporating the images with their maps, mostly because this is a seperate project which is actually a subscription based service for people who use it for their buisness etc. (real estate etc. etc.), for the full package it is actually quite expensive. And considering many big name companies such as CNN use it all the time on their shows. So i think that google will probably keep it seperate. Also the bandwidth needed to download these high resolution images might be too much for them to put it into the map situation.

Im not exactly sure why they dont use terra server's images for the rest of the nation outside of large cities, maybe because they are going for all Color photos.... if you notice when you are looking at any satellite imagery it will tell you where it came from in the bottom center of the screen.