Aerial imagery in Google Maps: Third best in Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast
By William M. Hartnett on Jul 9, 2007 in geekery
While messing around with Flash Earth at work the other day I noticed that Microsoft’s Virtual Earth (or Live Maps, or whatever they’re branding their mapping products) and Ask.com are killing Google Maps when it comes to aerial imagery in Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties down here in southeast Florida.
Ask.com, for example, appears to have far and away the most recent coverage of pretty much my entire area. Compare Google’s shot of my neighborhood, which looks to be approximately 2005-ish, with Ask.com’s image of the same location, which I’m guessing is from late January of this year.
Microsoft’s coverage isn’t as consistently up to date as Ask.com’s down my way, but they do have oblique imagery (from Pictometry) for West Palm Beach. (Check out what Microsoft calls the “bird’s eye view” of The Palm Beach Post building. Must have been shot on a Sunday morning, as it’s not exactly bustling. Or, if you don’t trust those hippies in the left-wing MSM, try Rush Limbaugh’s modest pad on Palm Beach.) It looks to be only about as recent as Google’s 2D aerial photography, but you can’t beat free oblique imagery.
