A while back a friend showed me that MapQuest had a tab to show you an aerial photo of the area covered by the map you were looking at. Kind of cool but a little creepy. I could see my own house.
It looks like this feature is gone. Why? Fear of easy data for terrorists? Privacy concerns? Economics?
I found my house once, too. Cool beans.
I would say terrorism, except there are other sites out there that have aerial photos. What they are escapes me…
Google’s my friend; searching for “aerial photo”, first link is:
http://geography.usgs.gov/partners/viewonline.html
So it’s not terrorism. I’m guessing the almighty buck. They seem to be cutting back on features at MapQuest. You used to be able to do a multiple-destination ‘road trip.’ No longer, but other sites can do that now. They also used to have the ‘big map’ option, which is now gone.
You can also use Terra Server (www.terraserver.com) which will find you satellite photos based on addresses.
I prefer the Microsoft Terraserver, at terraserver.microsoft.com
found my house and cars on map mart. could plot the coordinates, on my house and cars too
Mapquest’s aerial images came from GlobeXplorer.com. I have to agree that Mapquest has been slowly going to hell for sometime now…the first bad sign was when they blew away their MyMapquest feature without any warning. The lack of a “big map” option and the removal of the aerial images was just another reason to start using maps.yahoo.com. You can still view the images there, but they are watermarked unless you subscribe. Terraserver sadly makes you pay to get the good stuff now too.
Berkut is right: http://terraserver.microsoft.com has .25 meter resolution pics for selected urban areas, like Seattle. It’ll be listed under “Other Imagery”.
Or you can fiddle with USGS’s National Map and view the same areas and download hi-res TIFFs.
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When I discovered the Microsoft Terraserver, after looking at my house and my friends houses and famous places, I started trying to think of other places that would look interesting from above. I eventually found:
[ul]
[li]The US/Mexico border at the Pacific (the fence actually goes into the sea!)[/li][li]The Trinity site (1st A-Bomb blast, still a big circle-shaped scar in the sand!)[/li][li]Four Corners (you can just make out the big concrete slab, bleachers & the Indian strip mall gift shops)[/li][li]Mt. Rushmore (I think, all you can see from above is the bank of floodlights used to illuminate it)[/li][/ul]
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Wow! In color too!
Every time I tried to find my house on an aerial map on MapQuest, all I could see was the field that was there ten years ago. So obviously they weren’t using the most up to date satellite photos anyway…
Hail Ants, you got coordinates (any type) for those locations?
So it was TRUE, Shoeless? If they build it, you will come?
What did you do with all that corn?