Google Earth

[Type-O-Positive]

What are your views on Google Earth? Do you think it's a novelty? Or do you find it, intrusive? The 'Street view' of my house is two cars old, and still has my old 4x4 parked outside.
In Scotland. My daughters car appears twice. In two different towns. Obviously taken on different days.
I find it very useful, that a lot of online Estate agents use it. So that one can wander around the neighbourhood, to get the feel of an area, that you are considering.

[Bo Aakerstrom]

My hedge look a mess, but at least the lawn is mowed. If they only had come around my neighbourhood a week later...

Don't know about novelty, but it is kind of cool, I especially like the inclusion of 3D buildings.

[Howard Allen]

I love Google Earth, and find it indispensable: one of the best applications ever, IMHO. I'm a geologist, and the things I can do with GE I wouldn't have dared hope for only 5 or 10 years ago--and it's free! I use it to find precise directions to drilling locations out in the middle of nowhere, and generate GPS waypoints (I've found GE's coordinates—longitude/latitude and UTM—to be amazingly accurate). You can see rock outcrops along streams and roadcuts, and geological beds and structures clearly visible on mountainsides. The 3D tilting & "flyover" effect lets you explore remote mountain valleys in a way that you'd otherwise need a helicopter and bags of money to do. The first time I saw GE "shrink-wrap" a geological map onto a 3D landscape in the Rocky Mountains, I nearly swooned! What's not to like?

Street View is really useful, too. I always use it when I need to drive somewhere in an unfamiliar part of town or a city I've never been to, so I can see the turn-offs and addresses ahead of time. Makes finding places a breeze, when you've already seen the building and the potential parking spots.

Google Earth a novelty? Not to me. It's one of my most useful tools.

(Welcome to the forum, BTW!)

[Hugh Wyn Griffith]

I like it and find it useful including Street View although there can sometimes be a considerable discrepency between the date of the aerial view and the street view -- I suspect that aerial views are updated more frequently which is understandable.

The street view of our house shows it was taken on a Tuesday -- the recycling and the garbage bin are both out; Friday would be only the garbage .....

One can argue that this is in fact an invasion of privacy since I live in a Deed Restricted Community and although there is no gatehouse every road in is plastered with Private Road etc signs .....

I like the View / Historical Imagery too.

Street VIew I found useful the other day going to visit a Silversmith and from the address being able to pinpoint not just that he was located between the Pinellas Trail (a railroad line converted to a trail) and the active railroad line in a warehouse type building on the right just after a sign for the name of the industrial estate ......

[Type-O-Positive]

As far as privacy goes. There is the story, that the residents of one small English country hamlet, forewarned of Googles little, camera mounted, Smart cars impending arrival. Actually formed a physical barrier across the main street. To prevent it from entering the town.

[donmcc]

And I'm sure that delayed the filming by what, a week, until they could get in without the roadblock.

[Hugh Wyn Griffith]

Here I think they use VW Beatles ..... Not something you want to jump in front of!