This is really cool! Google last year acquired this satellite imaging company called Keyhole. And this year, Google launched Google Maps, one of the slickest webapps I’ve ever seen. People probably saw this coming but Google recently combined the two technologies and added satellite views to their Google Maps offering.

Unfortunately, the maps only cover North America. And while the satellite views cover the whole globe, only selected regions (like North America) have greater than 1-km resolution.

Nevertheless, I’m having fun with exploring the technology. I’m a huge map-freak. Give me a decent map and I’d spend more than a few minutes looking at it. Correspondingly, my big pet peeves are really lousy maps that either present inaccurate data or have really lousy scale (that can’t be justified through aesthetics).

Anyway, here’s a satellite view of my tita’s house in Coquitlam, B.C., one of the suburbs of Vancouver. The house should be at the very center of the picture, just to the upper-right of the intersection nearby.

And for more Google Satellite goodness, visit the Google Sightseeing blog. Their tagline says it all: “Why bother seeing the world for real?”

Update: Been exploring the blogosphere for a bit and I LOLed when I saw this parody picture. You should have explored Google Maps for a bit to get this joke. Hehehe.

Update 2: (July 3, 2005) I’ve got a new post about Google Maps Satellite View, showing some places in the Philippines.