I’ve noted before in this blog that Google now has a very cool map page. What I haven’t mentioned yet is that they added a very cool satellite image feature. You can browse North America by satellite photos just as easily as by maps. It has also led to some very interesting sites based purely on finding cool images in the massive photo database, including names carved into fields, airplanes in flight over land, stadiums with games in progress, and even a fair or gay pride parade in the Castro district of San Francisco.

I tried zooming in on the home campus of my college, but that’s when I found out that many areas have only limited resolution, and you can’t get very detailed images.

But some areas you can get great images of. Here’s San Francisco. Try it out. Double-click on a part of the map where you’d like to zoom in on. Double-clicking will center the map on that point. Then you can slide the zoom bar at the upper left to get a close-up view. You might want to try the TransAmerica Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, Candlestick Park (where that 49’ers game was being played–dad, can you see your car?), or perhaps my alma mater, San Francisco State University. Here’s a plane taking off from SFO, and here’s the South San Francisco City sign painted on the hillside. And here’s my hometown, and the house where I lived when I was born. Oh, and of course–Apple Computer headquarters!

Also, here’s the Hollywood sign. And here’s NORAD, which you may be familiar with if you watch Stargate SG-1. What can you find?

For notes on interesting images, there is the Google Sightseeing Blog, and this page with a wealth of links by type and state.