What have you learned about your neighborhood from Google?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have discovered, via Google’s various services, that:

  • My neighbors on the other side of the alley? Have a pool. I’d never have guessed, what with the 8-foot privacy fence and 20-foot windbreak trees they’ve got going. There’s a pink blob in the pool, but I can’t tell if they’re skinny-dipping or not. :slight_smile:

  • Google has not seen fit to update my neighborhood on the maps for a couple years, at least – the trampoline is not at all visible in the yard, and that’s how long it’s been up.

  • I’m pretty sure I now know who’s been occasionally blaring his drunken voice across my TV when I’ m watching local channels. Seven blocks over there’s a house screened by trees, and what looks like a ham operator’s rig poking up from the roof. Next time he starts spewing across the airwaves I’m gonna go remind him of FCC regs, dammit.

  • I have a Greek restaurant and two Chinese restaurants within walking distance! I’m gonna get me some gyros, yeah!

  • There are not two, but five schools within a mile. Huh. I only knew about the Catholic private school and the public elementary.

  • That beat-to-shit IROC-Z in my neighbors back yard? Didn’t used to be an IROC-Z. Apparently it was a Beetle in a previous life.

  • I need to replace some roofing shingles, looks like (on the garage).

  • Some dude two blocks over either knows about Google Maps and wanted to show off, or likes pissing off police helicopters/planes/etc, because the letters FAHQ are visible from above in his back yard. I’ve walked past that very place and believe me, you don’t notice at ground level. Heh. (Then again, this could be old imagery. Hmm.)

  • There is a big, ominous-looking building just a couple blocks away, on the route I usually follow to take my son to school, and I swear I had never noticed it before in my life. I don’t know how to get Google to tell me what it is, but I’ve taken a stroll past it (yesterday, when I found all this stuff) and it’s got no windows on ground level, is all brick, has only two doors that I can see (both of which are heavy steel security doors), and is damn hard to spot the way the landscaping is laid out. I think it’s either a secret CIA office or a telephone switching substation. I hope it’s the former. :smiley:

So, what oddness or new things have YOU found in your neck of the woods because of Google?

2

I found some interesting wrecks in the shallow bay behind my place of work - they’re only old concrete barges and remains of unidentifiable timber boats, but still quite interesting. Some are on the beach, others would be accessible at low tide if I wore waders.

3

I live in a fun neighborhood.

“The southeastern knob of Arakawa, Minami Senju, has long suffered from issues of identity, in some part because of its northeastern orientation vis-a-vis the perspective of Edo rulers. In Buddhist belief, northeast is kimon, or the direction from which evil forces come. As a result, at least in part, Minami Senju came to include a corner of the impoverished day-laborers’ warren of Sanya; the Nagekomi-dera at Jokanji, a temple where Yoshiwara prostitutes were interred; the Edo execution grounds known as Kozukappara where criminals were punished with decapitation, burning, or even crucifixion; and what is still locally known as Kotsu Dori (“Bone Avenue”), where severed heads of the executed were displayed on poles.”

“Slow train coming downtown”, Kit Nagamura, Japan Times, Sep 1, 2006.

4

[QUOTE=Sofaspud]

  • There is a big, ominous-looking building just a couple blocks away, on the route I usually follow to take my son to school, and I swear I had never noticed it before in my life. I don’t know how to get Google to tell me what it is, but I’ve taken a stroll past it (yesterday, when I found all this stuff) and it’s got no windows on ground level, is all brick, has only two doors that I can see (both of which are heavy steel security doors), and is damn hard to spot the way the landscaping is laid out. I think it’s either a secret CIA office or a telephone switching substation. I hope it’s the former. :smiley:
    [/QUOTE]
    Google[sup]™[/sup] is not the only resource open to you.

You can use the Spokane GIS related systems. Clicking on the Spokane CityMap Viewer link takes you to a city map. Make sure the “Tax Parcels” and “Buildings” check boxes are flagged and Click the “Tax Parcels” radio button. Drawing a small box on the map while in “Zoom In” mode will give you a street map of the area boxed.
Change from “Zoom In” mode to “Select” mode, Click on a parcel, then Click the Info tab, displaying general information (area, parcel number, address, school district, etc.) about the parcel. Then clicking the Spokane County Assessor Info at the bottom of that display will take you to a page where you promise to not use lists collected from the site for commercial purposes, then drills down to the Tax records for the property.
(Of course, if the NSA is using the local phone company as a cover for their secret offices, you won’t discover that, but at least you will know who they are using as a cover. :stuck_out_tongue: )

5

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Google[sup]™[/sup] is not the only resource open to you.

…
(Of course, if the NSA is using the local phone company as a cover for their secret offices, you won’t discover that, but at least you will know who they are using as a cover. :stuck_out_tongue: )
[/QUOTE]

Well, wow! Ignorance fought. I didn’t know any of that was available online.

Looks like I was right – it’s a front for the CIA (or NSA, maybe), masquerading as a Qwest telephone substation. If my DSL runs through there (seems likely), the gov’t might already know what I’m – oh, hang on, someone’s at the door…

6

I still live in a cornfield.

The streets are marked, but the imagery shows the cornfield that was there 3-4 years ago.

7

That I live in a suburb where the houses all look about the same, and that there’s nothing really interesting that I can tell. That and the image is fairly old, since it shows the tree that we had to have cut down a few years ago.

But that’s only the satellite view. I have no idea what these various Google services you speak of are, or how to access them.

8

Google Maps…hah! I tried to look at my house. I got zoomed in a little over halfway, then I got the “sorry, we don’t have current information” for it. My parent’s house - same way.

I wish they did have better images for here though. Is there a place that would?

Brendon Small

9

I learned that my neighbors 2-doors down have a friggin’ sweet driveway that goes all the way around their house to a garage in the back. I can see their house from my backyard but I never knew.

I also learned from Zillow.com that everyone else has more bathrooms than me :frowning:

That reminds me - I just had 9 trees cut down. I should go grab the Google satellite pic before it gets changed someday.

10

Is there a way to let Google know about higher resolution photos available for a certain area? My town has aerial photos for its GIS, but there are no high resolution photos available on Google Maps

11

[QUOTE=brendon_small]
Google Maps…hah! I tried to look at my house. I got zoomed in a little over halfway, then I got the “sorry, we don’t have current information” for it. My parent’s house - same way.

I wish they did have better images for here though. Is there a place that would?
[/QUOTE]
Boy, no one appears to like taking pictures of Portsmouth!

[ul][li]Google maps is incredibly poor.[/li][li]Google Earth is a bit better, but still really poor.[/li][li]Microsoft’s http://local.live.com/ is better than either Google product by an order of magnitude or more, but it is not as clear as I would hope and they do not have any of their “bird’s eye” views for your town.[/li][li]Microsoft’s joint venture with Terraserver has slightly better resolution than the local.live site, but it is in black and white and dates to 1994. (Enter at http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ using your address for the search argument, then select either the 1994 photograph or the 1991 topographical map and when that page is displayed, select the rightmost/largest square next to the “Size” label on the upper lft corner of the map to get the best view.)[/li][li]http://www.mapquest.com/ is not quite as good as live.local, although it is better than the Google offerings.[/ul][/li]
Write a nasty letter to your County Auditor demanding better GIS presentation. Currently, you can search for tax records and property descriptions, but they only provide a drawn sketch of either the property or the parcel (I did not look closely) without providing the aerial photography (or even neighborhood maps) the way that many other municipalities do.

12

I have learned nothing past it doesn’t show enough detail to be worth using. The city plat books have more detail.

13

I learned that my nearby grocery store doesn’t really exist.

14

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Boy, no one appears to like taking pictures of Portsmouth!

[/QUOTE]

Can you blame them? I wouldn’t take many pictures of here if I didn’t live here (that’s horrible, but we’re originally from the Athens area and I am ready to move back out into the country a little bit).

Using Terraserver on Microsoft I got an ariel picture from 1995, showing that the cemetary used to be a lot less populated (or at least smaller things that don’t show up on maps are in it, but there are large structures in there now).

Also, my house used to have a garage or building behind it. I knew this, but I can actually see it on the picture.

On local.live I took a look at the larger part of town, not just my little residential section. Apparently, while I think most maps still show 2nd street there, I looked at the college, clicked hybrid and the map shows the university, but the overlay shows several roads, including 2nd street as existent, which is now a sidewalk/bikepath down the middle of campus. Seems like each map does this, but there hasn’t been a road there for quite a while

By my old apartment is the Episcopalian Church, I learned they have a decent sized yard behind it, I never knew that in the whole year I lived there. No idea how I missed it.

The Bird’s Eye View on live.local is nice. I used it to find where my father has a dock in Sandusky, followed the bay across, and looked around at Cedar Point. Obviously, it’s decently new, since it includes some of the newer rides (Dragster and Millenium Force, but not the new red Wild-West-themed one that they are supposed to have opened this month) I like looking at these maps, even though I don’t learn much about where I live…

Brendon Small