Satellite's Eye View

Maybe I'm the only one... No, I've got to stop doing that. I'm quite sure I'm not always the last one to know everything--most of the time, but not always. Anyhow, it has been brought to my attention (through my honey--the husband, not the dog) that Google has a pretty fun, though at the moment limited, new feature on Google Maps that allows you to see satellite images of North America, although it's really mostly the U.S., which is why I say limited. But it's still fairly entertaining. Say you're far from home (if home is in North America) and hankering for a view of something familiar, you can search for your address, then click on the "Satellite" link, and you just might get a closeup bird's eye view of the top of your house, or at least the street where you live. "Hey look! There's George mowing the lawn!" Okay, maybe not that close.

The coolest thing I've seen so far is the airplane graveyard in Arizona (thanks to Google Blog for the heads up).

Alas, for those not interested in spying gazing upon the United States and parts of Canada (and Mexico, I think), you'll either have to wait for Google to upgrade its service, or you can sign up for a free trial with Keyhole (the company newly acquired by Google), which lets you view satellite images of a few of the bigger cities around the world. Warning: my husband downloaded it and my computer started working itself into such a froth it sounded like it was going to explode--i.e., don't bother unless you have a pretty powerful machine.