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The thing is, this information is widely available, and other sources have far more detailed (and non-blurry) images. Just try typing in "1600 Pennsylvania Ave" into this website and compare it to Google's satellite images at the highest level of detail.

We're talking about Google maps, here, people. You can find much better satellite pictures from the website Globe Explorer This stuff is public information, available from many sources. Picking on Google is a fun pastime, it's true, but they are not even showing us the most detailed public information available. For instance, you can see the White House in all its glory, zoomed much further in, on Globe Explorer than you can on Google, a website that masks the roof of the building and doesn't have the level of detail that the other site has.

Think carefully before giving up your freedoms; you will not get them back.

And let's not forget about the California Coastline project (helicopter taking VERY high resolution images every 500' along the entire California coast.

I found some sort of easter egg there. Zoom in on that center photo, then look in the bottom-left corner of the image, right up near the waterline by the tidewall... is that a mannequin of a naked woman (with hair too!), or is that painted on the landscape there? Or is it really a cadaver? A sunbather? I can't quite tell...

And of course, there's Map24, which has, hands-down the best mapping UI out of anything I've ever used.

Now I just wish some of these sites would support "mobile" directions and maps. Hrmph, Google's "Directions" link on maps.google.com doesn't even work at all, it just reloads/refreshes the main map view in anything but MSIE. What a waste.

MapQuest was supplied with imagery by GlobeXplorer. Both Keyhole (hence Google) and GlobeXplorer use a mix of public and private sources, so some of what you see on one service is also on the other. For example, many states have started taking their own aerial photos, which are made available online. I live in NY, and Google shows me the same image of my house that I can get more easily from NYSGIS (at 1 foot resolution, too, whereas Google only goes down to 1 meter). GlobeXplorer, however, has 6 inch resolution imagery for my area (which was in turn acquired from AirPhotoUSA, I believe), so they show that instead. In general, different imagery providers will have different groups of datasets, some of which overlap, so some areas will have the same imagery and some will not.

Sanborn may be referring to something he buried on the CIA grounds, though he's not saying. The decrypted text mentions a burial and gives latitude and longitude coordinates (38 57 6.5 N, 77 8 44 W), which Sanborn said referred to "locations of the agency."

GlobeXplorer shows some parkland adjacent to a collection of buildings (presumably CIA HQ), but no "X".
It's probably only a cache of Iraqi WMD, or an alien spacecraft... Move along, nothing to see here.

During the past few months I've been creating a 3d model of my current/future house in AutoCAD. Easy access to arial photography has allowed me to add a bit of realism to the rendered drawings concerning ground color, tree positions, road, etc. I've also added the neighbors houses to see how the my house will look in the setting.

To the point, these arial photos brought me to the realization that a garage would be better suited to the east side of the house rather than the west, where the driveway is currently... There's more space between me and my eastern neighbor which will provide a more balanced perception of property lines. This isn't a decision that benefits me as much as it does the neigborhood. Granted, I probably could've realized the imbalance without the arial shots, but would I have? Is it usefull for a local government to release information that may allow citizens to make better decisions concerning their property? Nice neigborhoods attract business and residents (aka people to steal tax money from ;) after all.

I started the project with shots from http://terrafly.fiu.edu but later upgraded to some fancy hi-res color shots from www.globexplorer.com despite the price. And on the subject of local governments releasing aerial photos this one has released all of theirs... Unfortunatly I'm just outside of their field of view.

Here's the product if you're interested. It's hardly finished, but better than nothing.

For a high-res view but user-interface nightmare, GlobeXplorer has free and subscription imagery online that incorporates aerial photography for less than 1 meter resolution (like way zoomed in.)

Of course, what roxorz is that the NASA prog is free. At least for now!

--
carbolic
WiFi-toys

Here is a commercial site but you can use it for free with watermarks. You can zoom to a persons house. All you need to type in the address of the place. Pretty nice, check it out. Only problem is that some of the images are a couple years old... but then how often do streets and house move/change physcially?

Don't forget to license your Ortho-Rectified Kite data to http://www.globexplorer.com/

In much of the United States, the Corps of Engineers builds dams on local streams to create lakes for recreation and water supply. For instance, look at this satellite image of Dallas. All those lakes are artificial and are made from tiny, even intermittent Texas streams, very much unlike the rivers found elsewhere. So, in a sense, there are bodies of water that exist only in the vicinity of cities in this part of the world. If they affect weather, that is more than I know.

take a look at GlobeXplorer - they have satellite views of everywhere in the U.S., although they're best on the west coast. Try putting your street address in, you might be scared.