A few months ago, Google rolled out Google Maps, in my opinion the absolute best mapping site out there. Yesterday afternoon, Google added to the already superb service by integrating color satellite (or aerial) photography to the mapping options. Now, you can not only find your house like you can at Terraserver, but you can see it in color and from a recent image. Google has gone with tradition however, and, just like Terraserver and SpaceImaging, blurs the roofs of the White House and surrounding buildings, presumably to obscure the Secret Service posts on those roofs as well as a number of other buildings in the greater D.C. area. The National Security Agency doesn’t get the same treatment, but that’s not too suprising since there’s nothing too secret about the roofs around Ft. Meade. The airfield at Groom Lake, NV is only shown using the lower-resolution, presumably older imaging, although since Area 51 is in the middle of the desert, this isn’t too suprising. Many less-populated rural areas are covered using the same resolution.

I would like if they added a feature that would allow one to use the maps that they generate – right now the only way to save a map is to use a print-screen and crop out the map. This has a number of shortcomings related to the scale and location properties of the map, and keeps people from using the maps in applications outside of the maps.google.com domain.

Overall, good job Google. Keep the goodies coming!