Researching Locations with Google Earth: Part 1

You might be familiar with services such as Mapquest and Google Maps that help you to find your way between destinations. If you live in a town like mine, you might have even seen a newspaper article that Google's street view van came through the area, recording what the place looked like along with issues such as who was on the street at the time and maybe even who was walking past a window in their house naked--they're still working out some of the privacy issues and kinks. Street view allows you to zoom in so close in Google Maps that you can actually see footage of the place recorded by the vans, really seeing the area like someone on the street would.

Now, I don't want this article to come off as a Google ad. In fact, I have a number of issues with Google and its policies. However, in their drive to become THE go-to place for data and information on everything, they have hit a few home runs in the way of making the world a bit smaller. You can use Google Earth to not only see what a location looks like from an orbiting satellite, but also to zoom in and get a better look.

How Low Can You Go?

How far you can zoom in for a particular location depends on a number of factors, such as:

• If for some reason the location is purposely set in Google to prevent you from zooming too close. This situation occurs for war zones, sensitive security areas, and other locations where a government entity approaches Google on this topic.
• If someone involved with the location has paid to have additional images taken with special flights or some other method, allowing you to zoom in further and see more detail.
• If someone has built a 3-D model of any part of the location, allowing you to explore it.
• If the Google Street View van has been through the area.

In addition to zooming in and looking around, Google Earth also takes advantage of the fact that many people today have cameras with GPS locators built in. When those people upload pictures to popular sites like Flickr, those pictures show up on Google Earth in the form of little graphical links. Click those links and you see pictures of that exact location, with the advantage that they were probably taken at many times of day and year.

Is There Real Practical Use?

A friend recently told me that she was working on a story and wanted to be sure how a particular downtown Vancouver location was laid out. She could have driven up from Seattle, or begged me to drive down to Vancouver and check, but instead she decided to try out Google Earth. Since her interest involved a major city her chances were pretty good that she'd find what she needed, and lo and behold, she was able to confirm exactly what she needed to, saving both of us gas and time (not to mention begging and negotiating).

While you're not seeing a live video feed of a location, there is also the option of going back in time. Each time an image of an area is updated, the older images are preserved and remain accessible. Just activate the timeline feature and drag the slider. If there aren't any older pictures available, then the image won't change.

For Some Real Fun

You can also use Google Earth to explore the oceans, the sky (the constellations, for example), the Moon, and Mars.

Next time I'll take you on a bit of a tour of using Google Earth.