Up until yesterday, every time I checked out our town on Google Maps or Google Earth, I was frustrated by the low-res images that were in the database. Well thats changed and now there are great images for Urbana, although they’re a year or two old. (You can see the veggie-diesel truck in the yard from a former housemate)
There are a lot of sweet GIS tools that Google offers through Earth and Maps that allow you to play with the images and add your own content layers. I drew a path that shows my bike route to work everyday. Then I made a screen capture.
GIS (geographic information systems) is an exciting field that has many possible community applications. La Casa member, Jacob, made this map last year that shows where all the fruit trees are growing in town. This is a form of community asset mapping. Pretty sweet. What else can we do?
