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October 20, 2011
Tool of the day: Google’s “Follow Your World” feature
A web app lets you track satellite and aerial imagery over time.
Nieman Journalism Lab
by Megan Garber
Google has a cool feature: an app, Follow Your World, that allows you to track satellite images of locations you specify within Google Maps and Google Earth. Each time Google updates its satellite and aerial imagery for the areas you’ve selected, it’ll send you a notification letting you know about the new info.
The feature’s been around since January; today, it’s expanding into 43 additional languages, from Arabic to Estonian, Serbian to Vietnamese. And while the app is a nifty thing overall — you could use it, say, to track changes in the neighborhood you grew up in, or on your college campus, or at the town you’ll be vacationing in this winter — the feature also provides potentially useful data for reporters. (Particularly in combination with Google Earth’s Historical Imagery showcase, which lets you compare satellite images as they’ve changed over time.) Think of, say, reporting on Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards project.
NoLandGrab: Thanks, but like Bartleby, we'd prefer not to.
Posted by eric at October 20, 2011 11:51 AM