Monday, March 13, 2006

Google moves in on taking over the Universe

Google Earth captured everyone's attention when it was launched. How much fun is it to find satellite images of your house, your work, your church, your mother-in-law's-bridge-friend's summer home? You can spend hours looking at every place you've ever been to.  Well, my house if far enough away from a big city that you can't actually get much closer than a blob (our neighborhood) with lines running through it (our streets). But it was close enough to say "hey! I live somewhere in that white blob!" One of my co-worker's lives in a trailer park, and you can actually see the cars parked in the driveways.  And my library's parking lot comes in so clear that I can plainly tell it was a weekend when they took the picture - it's the only time it's that empty.

But don't you feel like the other planets are kind of missing out on the fun? I mean, what if we could look at Jupiter's Red Spot (or the newest addition to Jupiter's Meteorological wonders, Red Jr.)?  How about a close up look at Venus? What if we could look at Mars?

Ahhh, but you can look at Mars! Those computer whizzes in Mountain Springs, announced this morning that Google Mars is now ready for public consumption.  So go ahead, play around. You know you want to.

2 comments:

Faith Bicknell said...

I had to chuckle when I read this. I had a friend send me this info and I could go in and see our farm. Well, his photo was so detailed I could see the rain puddles on his apartment house roof! Our farm? It was a giantic green blob that looked more like something a kid had colored than a map or satellite photo.

Yeah, we're pretty rural too.

K.A.S. said...

Wow. That was neat for a few minutes.

Then I started thinking. And I decided that googles time would be better spent getting Writely and Ajax released.

Come on Google, you're giving me an ulcer. Gimmie my free software, and make it the software I want! Grrr!

(Yeah,maybe that last Sobe was one Sobe to many today...)