Want a different view of a coast line?

I have just been shown a a new website "Google Earth" which uses satellite photography. When it first comes on you have a view of he globe showing whole continents. You are able to scoll down into the detail that you can see the likes of the Eiffel Tower clearly and the tourist buses parked beside it.

I followed the East Australian coastline along and was able to see sufficient detail that you would get a good bird's eye view of a harbour you may not be familiar with to get a feel of where you'd go. I believe it makes a great addition to the Admiralty charts and allows you to better visualise the journey. I'd be interested in your thoughts of it.

Regards,

Rod

[dnelson]

Great concept. I wonder what the copyright laws are, and if you could use the images in a cruising guide? With a little added annotation the pictures could make a great hardcopy guide.

[JeanneP]

I just downloaded it and hope to play with it over the next several months. It says that it can receive input from our Garmin GPS, which I would like to do. It's really great.

The detail for the US, UK, and Canada is wonderful - down to individual houses. But it is much less detailed for other parts of the world right now, and I find that there are mistakes. Considering the scale of the project, a few mistakes are understandable, but if you used the images you would have to be sure to put in all sorts of caveats - "not to be used for navigation", etc. Each image has a copyright stamp on it, and the license agreement to use the software says you won't use the images for resale.

below are excerpts from the license agreement.

"This Software is for non-commercial use only and your rights in the Software are strictly limited to home, personal or recreational use only by you and not for the benefit of third parties."

"You shall not copy, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, translate, modify or make derivative works of the Software, geographical information, screen outputs or prints in whole or in part. Further, you shall not rent, disclose, publish, sell, assign, lease, rent, sublicense, market, or transfer the Software, geographical information, prints or screen outputs or any part

thereof or use it in any manner not expressly authorized by this Agreement."

[Auzzee]

Well spotted Ron. A good website. I found the mud bank off the Lucinda jetty in the Hinchinbrook channel that I chose to rest on for a while, three years back.....Good memories!