Google Vancouver

It's official: I'm addicted to Google Earth.
Technologically-advanced adults and virtually anyone under the age of twelve are no doubt already familiar with the software to the point of boredom. Not me.

I remember seeing a similar kind of technology being marketed to the Pentagon sometime after Somalia and before the second Gulf War. I never thought this kind of capability - viewing sattelite images of almost anywhere in the world at such high resolution that I can make out the details of individual houses and cars and buses on the streets - would be offered for free to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection (Some parts of the world are mysteriously off limits to closer examination. Oh well, I didn't really need to see the docked subs in Russian's naval yards in Vladivostok anyway).

In the last 48 hours, I've spent a good chunk of my free time exploring the far reaches of the Earth, from my old neighborhood in Winnipeg to the world's greatest capitals and the forbidden lands of some of the most notorious regimes ever mapped on sattelite.

Inevitably, my searches wandered closer to home. The images of Vancouver (downtown, False Creek, Capilano Suspension Bridge, Chinatown and my own neighborhood) that I've conjured up with Google Earth's engine have only given me a new appreciation for my adopted home town.

Can't blog now. I've got to see just how good the resolution is for Wreck Beach.

tags: Google Earth, Kitsilano, downtown, False Creek, Capilano Suspension Bridge, Chinatown, technologically advanced