Google Earth in your neighborhhood?

[sawdust_maker]

you can also check aerial view from mapquest or bing, the pictures are different. My house view on mapquest is from last summer.

I doubt that someone will be casing my house from these pictures. They could get far more and better information by driving down the road.

Google - the picture there is now about 7 years old. I can tell from a boat that we had roughly that long ago, and where we used to dock it. No view of the house itself, just tree tops in a picture taken in late August, and far too little detail to see anything. No street view anyway. Who would bother to look at our dirt road?

Mapquest - it locates our house in the middle of a ravine (actually a wetlands) about 1/8 of a mile away from the true location. The resolution is so poor anyway that you could never see anything, not to mention that the picture was taken in mid-summer, so the trees completely obscure everything. No house is even seen, just the tops of trees.

Bing - The only site to actually image our house. The picture is no more recent than 3 years old, taken in mid to late october I think from some work being done on our neighbor's house, so the leaves are just fallen off the trees.

Zillow - uses the Bing photo.

Of these sources, Bing had the most recent photos and the highest resolution. I suppose that Bing did not exist 5 years ago, so their photos must be more recent.

So then I tried a few different places, past homes of ours that were not quite so far out as we live now. No locations showed enough to be useful to anyone.

John

 

[Bedlam]

Gosh seems like the computer in the car would be more of a distraction than a texting driver.

 

[Western]

We use Bing to survey job sites on occasion. Like other posters have noted the photos are dated, but for what we are looking at it works out pretty good. Has saved us allot of miles and since these are business locations the jobs usually need little adjustment for errors.

 

[Paystar]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Recently the 360degree pictures of an adjacent road to the farm have shown up on google earth and our other house which is on a corner lot is cleary visible from the paved road images they have taken and posted.

I was wondering if you folks are aware of this and have/would find it an invasion of privacy?

From a real estate, tax assesor or thief point of view this is a great tool.....

Funny you should say this. A couple of my neighbours had their property taxes skyrocket. When they called to inquire why, they were told it was because of the new buildings on their property that were spotted during aerial surveilence. In actuality they were open wood sheds to cover their firewood, but when looking from above all you see is a roof, so they asumed they were buildings. They had to get the assessment people to come look to get it straightened out.

 

[Bedlam]

Brings new meaning to the old 'Bear in the air"

 

[brin]

About the only thing left is microphones in our homes...when will that be here ?

 

[JB4310]

About the only thing left is microphones in our homes...when will that be here ?

I was thinking after bird's eye view and street view, the next one will be window view! !!!

 

[dgl24087]

Ever wonder what life is like as a Google car driver?

YouTube - Google Street View Guys

Awesome!

 

[tugboat-2]

Google Earth has me on an entirely different road. My farm is on the outskirts of a tiny hamlet which "Google" has "re-located" a mile south and a mile east of where it should be. My road doesn't exist on the map as they have it.

I know where I am, but try to explain to first timers trying to locate me via Google. (Most catch on quick like UPS and make their own alterations but I have tried explaining to Google more than a few times.

Eventually,.... Google Earth explained that the "Corrections" page is only good in the US of A and at present Canada must simply accept it,..as is.

UNFORTUNATELY,..... GPS makers apparently depend on Google Earth for their map work and that "apparently" means GPS's get corrected when Google makes their corrections. I attempted many, many times to explain it to Tom-Tom GPS but they are not user friendly.

My new Garmin works much better than Tom, but also needs the correction. I must remind myself, how relatively "new" this sort of technology is and that it takes time to iron out the many bugs.

Young folks growing up "with" it would likely argue, but having used a paper road map and a compass for as long as I can remember,...this "IS".. NEW !! (An environmental investigation I worked on less than ten years ago could have used this stuff as I had to depend on "old Army maps" for elevations, hills, valleys, swamps and wetlands and other important info). SHeeeesh!

CHEERS! . . . and Happy New Year !!
. . tug

PS: . . . interesting tale Paystar,... we'll have to start using "Cammo-Roof-Paint",...eh?

 

[NSBound]

.... Google Earth explained that the "Corrections" page is only good in the US of A and at present Canada must simply accept it,..as is.

UNFORTUNATELY,..... GPS makers apparently depend on Google Earth for their map work and that "apparently" means GPS's get corrected when Google makes their corrections. I attempted many, many times to explain it to Tom-Tom GPS but they are not user friendly.

Tug, try visiting the Navteq website ( NAVTEQ Maps and Traffic ) and see if your location is correct or incorrect there. I used to work for a major auto manufacturer and Navteq at that time was the sole source for mapping for GPS systems. So, if Navteq got it wrong, everyone got it wrong.

I noticed an error in my car's Navi system a couple of years ago, had our engineers report it back to Navteq, and it was fixed for the next release of the software. Mybe if you are wrong in Navteq's maps and report it to them, it might get corrected everywhere else too?? Just a thought.

 

[JB4310]

Was traveling in Vermont a couple years ago between Stratton and Bromely ski areas and some one had a large hand lettered sign that read something like "go back, your GPS is wrong" it was at the beginning of a long private road/drive.

Guess they got tired of having people drive down there and having to turn around in their yard.

.

 

[dmccarty]

Over the holidays I paid a visit to the county offices to pay my taxes and visit the GIS office. Ten years ago you could go into the GIS office and view large sheets of paper with the aerial photos. 30ishx36ish sized paper. Great resolution. You could see root balls from trees in the woods, green transformer boxes, etc. You could buy the print as well. But the county does not sell these any longer.

You can access the photos on the Internet but the resolution is not as good as what they have in the office. But it was good enough for what I wanted.

I have gone back and looked at all of the places I used to live or where family used to live via the Google Street view. It was interesting to see how things had changed. Or not. Sure cheaper than traveling to those places.

Later,
Dan

 

[riptides]

About 20 years ago I was working at NASA on Earth Sensing satellites. We had clean rooms that would develop images from space vehicles. It was hard to find a clean shot of what we were looking at, but when we did, we were in awe. We could make out the landmarks of our Nations Capitol, peer at the islands of the pacific, look at the ag-farms of the west, and the crop-circles in the deserts......

Now-a-days I can google/bing/mapquest/terra-server/globalmapper a 3-d image and we gripe about it. Amazing the technology the Public has available to it.....

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Looks like google now has our local GIS data, because they now show property lines on google maps in my area. They also did a drive by recently, my street view is last Sept-oct timeframe. They also now show real estate for sale on the map.

 

[rdln]

I thought the good resolution stuff could be had if you bought a membership to globexplorer and other similar sites.

 

[firefighter9208]

Google and mapquest are both wrong for my address. It is 50 (first house on the right) on a dead end road. They have you drive one mile up my road and turn off on a side road. They then say my house is the first on the left.

No matter how many times I give people directions and tell them that Google, Mapquest, and their GPS will be wrong. I'll stand in the yard and watch them drive by. 5 minutes later they'll come back down the road a turn into my driveway.

I just reported this to Google. We'll see how long it takes to get it corrected.

Chris

 

[MossRoad]

My wife got Mapquest directions to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky one time. We followed them. The road kept getting smaller. The road signs were accurate, though, so we kept going. Finally, it had us turn down a one lane gravel road that took us past a couple houses and ended in a very nice barn.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

My wife got Mapquest directions to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky one time. We followed them. The road kept getting smaller. The road signs were accurate, though, so we kept going. Finally, it had us turn down a one lane gravel road that took us past a couple houses and ended in a very nice barn.

Good to know, I might go there this summer
Probably will stop and see the even greater attraction in the area, Brady's Tractors

 

[WBWI]

terraserver.com has the most recent images of my area. They are from September 2007. Its cool because my house was just completed and I was wondering what the impact was on the forest. Bad thing is you can't get the detail bing or google has.

 

[JayC]

Here's some interesting images caught by the Google car.

Top 10 Moments Caught on Google Maps Street View - Urlesque