While preparing for my talk at EdTech last week I stumbled across an announcement that Google Earth was releasing a huge new batch of images on October 3. During the talk I got a glimpse of these images, but was unable to explore them fully until I had a chance to sit down on a lazy Sunday morning.
It now appears that all of South Carolina is available in higher (not the highest) resolution. I did a spot check of places around the state, and this does appear to be the case. I hit some of my genealogy sites that I knew to be in low res previously, and they were much clearer, as was all of my school district.
North Carolina doesn’t seem to have received as many updates. The images dropped to low res when I crossed the state line. Then again, I haven’t had a chance to check out most of that state. Georgia seems to have fared better. I was able to find Houston’s house on Black Ike Road. While the picture of the AREA around his house is clearer, the house itself is more obscured by vegetation. I have absolutely no doubt that he planned it that way.
Most of the images are fairly recent. New construction along the Reedy River is visible and seems to be up do date. However, construction on the new schools in our district isn’t visible. I’m guessing most of the updates are two years old, for the oldest of them. That’s not too bad.
The image below is of the Reedy Falls area of Greenville…
technorati tags:Google Earth