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Google Earth -- what cool things have you seen with it?

MyDoorsAreOpen

MyDoorsAreOpen

Bluelight Crew
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Aug 20, 2003
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Google Earth is my new favorite toy. I've been a geography nerd ever since I got an atlas for my 4th birthday, and used to spend hours -- days! -- of my childhood just staring at the strange names and landforms in far off places, and wondering what those places must look like. The atlas is pretty beat up these days, but still sits proudly on my shelf, and thumbing through it can sometimes have an effect on me not unlike eating comfort food. If Google Earth had been invented when I was a kid...

Now I can see roughly EXACTLY how far-off places look, at least from up in the air. And (for better and for worse!) this satellite imaging technology is only going to get better in resolution and closer to real time.

Just last night, I was in North Korea. That's a pretty murky place compared to most on Google Earth, but it was really cool, every now and then, to clearly pick out a village, or even a city deep in the interior and far from picture perfect Pyongyang, and be able to make out individual buildings, and even find some contributed photographs or blurbs about the places! I discovered a city that's been covered in virgin snow all winter so far, and has apparently shown no signs of recent human activity, leading people in the outside world to speculate about why the city was abandoned.

Does NK even have the internet??

Tell us about some virtual adventures you've had with Google Earth.
 
not really had adventures, so much as spent HOURS "travelling".
you see some pretty cool stuff sometimes.

and also now, with the addition of Street View, well, it speaks for itself.



area 51 is pretty neat, and the forbidden city too.
theres a lot of abandoned cities, particularly in asia, that are cool to view.

and when you zoom right into how it would b if you were standing next to a car, and then hold the minus ( - ) key, you truly get a proper idea of how big the planet REALLY is.
 
check out youtube for some interesting tours. there are also websites listing the locations of all sunbathing nudists =D
 
I saw myself on google maps, and a bunch of people in random place while looking through my neighbourhood.
 
I'm a dork so I think everything on it is cool... :D

And not so much a particular location, but the fact that I can see friends' houses in other states and even other countries is freakin awesome! It's so irrelevant but it still feels like it has meaning to see them. :)
 
one of my guilty pleasures is scrolling to places like japan, hawaii and australia looking for roads that look like the most fun to drive along. i also have the geography of southern ontario memorized since i've found the most fun (i.e. twistiest) roads to drive on are always near the roughest terrain, so i just put that filter on and look for the wrinkles then zoom in and check for roads %)
 
Not from Google Earth but a weird anomaly from a meteorology satellite

This website claims the below satellite image was saved from the Bureau of Meteorology site on January 16 :

AustraliaWeirdWeatherMap


An explanation from the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Met Office :

It would therefore seem to be due to what is referred to as "anomalous propagation"(false echoes) or even possibly dust in the atmosphere.​
Click to expand...
 
I like looking at all the intense cities in China. Tokyo is pretty cool too; with a pop of 34 million it's the largest city in the world. Seen the golden gate bridge and a few other cool land marks as well.
 
I'm a total geography nerd as well, and I look at maps all the time when I'm just chillin. love love love google earth. i think it'd be cool as shit to have the job of the person who just drives around in the google van all day taking the images for street view :)

tn_google_van.jpg


its also cool to look back at all the houses ive lived at before for nostalgia n whatnot.

i dunno if ive ever seen anything that sticks out from memory but got some pretty good laughs at just googling for google street view funny... somebody's always watching!!
 
The river-delta of Egypt is pretty cool, following the entire river is too.

I also look at vacant land I own & figure out how to get there or see if anyone built houses nearby. (Some of the land I never visited.)
 
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