google earth

["Rich Peet" richpeet]

FYI
This is a fairly well known free program but I have not seen a post
about it here yet. But then, I have been a bit out of touch with
people and groups this year.

I have been using Google Earth this year for research prior to going
to new areas.  This gives you satellite photos of the entire world
with resolution that varies with different locations.  It appears to
be best at about 1 meter resolution with the worst being about 15
meter resolution.  All areas appear to be under 3 year old photos.

This is an amazing piece of computer programming and although you need
to be on line to use it you can cache areas for use in the field.

This software is a "must see" program for Nature Recordists.

You need a new operating system (XP, OSX) for it to work and a high
speed internet connection makes it much more usable.

http://earth.google.com/

Rich Peet