Google's 45° Los Angeles

Just noticed this nice 45° view of downtown LA in Google Maps satellite view. I'll be sad to see the day when global/Google surveillance shots are so perfectly stitched together that the crooked buildings disappear.

Google Maps Abstractions

It's tough to rationalize the work that goes into making a brand new abstract picture when the Google Maps fleet has already produced such good ones, like these images of New Jersey just across from New York City.

Google Earth Architecture

NW corner of Bryant Park, 42nd St. and Sixth Ave., New York, NY

Here are some of the distorted designs that emerge when individual Google Earth photos -- taken at different angles by Google's massive fleet of surveillance satellites -- are patched together for display.  I noticed these along 42nd St.

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Above: Trump World Tower (near the U.N.) near lower right corner, and around Rockefeller Center.  Below: 42nd St. and Fifth Ave.; building in lower left is the main branch of the New York Public Library