Everyone knows I'm a huge fan of Google Earth, but now Windows Live Local has a cool feature that lets you get a "bird's-eye view" from an isometric angle that can be much more interesting than looking straight down. The images are pretty high resolution, and you can practically look into peoples' windows.
(HT: Future Feeder and reader JV.)
Hallo. About Google Earth, I'm collecting italian beautiful places with placemarks (kmz files):
http://italyongoogleearth.blogspot.com
Hope you like!
how often do you think they update. i looked up our house and the pic is at least 6 months old.
Some of the satellite imagery - around Mountain View, at least, which is where I went just to check it out - is the same as on Google Earth/Local.
And a lot of the imagery on Google Earth/Local is not straight down. (That way a single satellite picture can take in a bigger area. Buildings towards the edge of that area will be tilted away from the satellite, a consequence of perspective and also of the curvature of the earth). For example, the buildings in Manhattan (NYC) are not seen top down. Here you can almost look into my parents' window:
http://www.google.com/local?f=q&hl=en&t=k&ll=40.77209,-73.981274&spn=0.001186,0.002283&t=k
In fact, the buildings in Manhattan tilt away from each other so quickly, it's fairly clear those are aerial shots, not satellite images:
http://www.google.com/local?f=q&hl=en&t=k&ll=40.765315,-73.980882&spn=0.002373,0.004565&t=k
The problem comes when you have to put together two or more areas where the buildings along that edge tilt different ways... Either you make a sharp divide and end up with something that looks out of an M C Escher picture...
http://www.google.com/local?f=q&hl=en&t=k&ll=40.758733,-73.978747&spn=0.004746,0.00913&t=k
Or you make a blurry transition which looks not too good:
http://www.google.com/local?f=q&hl=en&t=k&ll=40.769069,-73.982642&spn=0.001186,0.002277&t=k
That's always the problem with stitching a composite image... Either you take all the shots from one spot (in which case things that are farther from you are seen from the side) or you take lots of shots, each one only taken from small incremental distances from each other (in which case each thing is seen from the same angle but must be shot individually).
My brother's house in a suburb south of Chicago has pics of the construction site with materials. He has been living there for 3 years in a completed house so the pic is a bit dated.