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I didn't know where else to post this. I'm sure a lot of you know about Google Earth, but if you don't, it's free software that lets you zoom in on sattelite photo all over the globe. The Earth is not covered 100%, but larger cities and places of interest to the government are.
You can zoom down to surprising detail: it's easy to see houses and cars and even people. It's useful when you're writing about an unfamiliar place, and you wonder what's on the corner of 5th and main. You can download it free at earth.google.com.
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I already have this and all I've done on it so far is find out where I used to live. The picture was blurred beyond belief but I could still make out my dad's car in the driveway, so the photo was taken before we left that house. In our new house, the lawns are all brown in the photo.
So I've used it, doubt I will use it for my writing. But Google Earth is possibly a good tool for writers.
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Leigh, try zooming in on a large city like New York or Paris. There is no blurring. Also, where there's a federal installation, like where I live in Huntsville, AL or Oak Ridge, TN. Bagdad and the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan are also very clear.
Posts: 98 | Registered: Aug 2006
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The 3D version of many cities is kind of neat. You can zoom in on certain cities and tilt the camera to street level. It gives a 3D representation of the buildings. Try New Orleans or New York.
Posts: 36 | Registered: Jan 2006
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The picture of my house that came up was at least two years old. The old roof was still on and the tree that blew down in Hurricane Charley was still there.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Google Earth is pretty cool. You can do similar things just with maps.google.com (click the Satellite or Hybrid button top right of map). Also Micrsoft has local.live.com which also has a satellite mode.
The data for these things get updated from time to time. The google shot of our home updated just recently. We're in the boonies, so still not great shot like the big cities.
Last year we located the home where my wife lived when she was born. She'd not been there in years, but could remember from her childhood that her school bus left the school and passed a graveyard. She found those and scanned until land marks showed the homesite. We then drove right to it on our trip this summer. Pretty cool.
I could see it being helpful as a tool if you've got the need. I could see using it to visualize a remote place that I've not visited, but want to write about.
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There's also a Google Moon and Google Mars. They are less like Google Earth and more like the Google maps, but they are still convenient resources for those two worlds.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2010
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The different-angle pictures (north, south, east, west) of my house seem to have been taken at different times, but the general age was about the same, last time I looked. They're always building 'round here---there's another house going up down the street even as I speak---so updates would be a necessity.
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