by CNET
BBQ Island off the coast of Panama is a high-resolution patch in the middle of a low-resolution ocean of Google Maps. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: Google)
Satellite schmatellite.
Frank Taylor, author of the Google Earth blog who’s on a five-year sailboat trip called the Tahina Expedition, supplied Google with aerial imagery that’s much higher-resolution than the usual fare obtained from cameras in orbit. The imagery is arriving on Google Maps and Google Earth.
The process has some complications satellites don’t have to worry about, though. “Due to the sun getting low in the sky, we weren’t able to cover a large part of the village,” Taylor said Monday of shots from Manihi atoll in French Polynesia now arriving in Google Maps. “There were telephone/electric poles and wires and trees in the village, so we had to avoid getting the kite string caught in those.”
The French Polynesian atoll already had some imagery. Not so for another site photographed by kite, BBQ Island, one of the San Blas islands near Panama. It shows as a patch of high-resolution detail amid a sea of low-resolution ocean on Google Maps.
This view shows the difference between imagery of Tahiti shot from a kite and the much lower resolution satellite imagery. (Click to enlarge.)(Credit: Google)
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank, or contact him through Google Buzz.Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20019284-264.html#ixzz12C5qXoMy