Genealogy Chat

My neice from America visited yesterday, and downloaded Google Earth (Free). Go into Google, Click More, Click Downloads, then select GOOGLE EARTH. Once installed click 'Fly to' and put in your home address (Anywhere in the world) You can zoom in on Your house so far that you can see your car parked in the drive! Amazing. Try it

It only works for some areas of the UK. Also, you need quite a high spec PC to be able to use it effectively. Check out the specs page before you download. It is quite cool though :)

Just to reinforce the computer spec. point, some people have reported computer problems after trying to run it on an older computer.

multimap used to have the same? aerial photo's that you could zoom in and even ID the flowers in your garden. but now they only allow a zoom of 1:5,000 i removed GOOGLE EARTH as although i am on upto date windows xp i still had problems with it? Roy

Plus they are very old pictures, when i zoomed in on google earth picture it had my old house with open fields to the rear, and that field has been a housing estate for the last 5 years. Roy

I know that when I checked it out a couple of months back there was a car in our driveway which we sold about 5 years ago.

Hmm, I just tried this. Was quite interesting, though as someone else said it is quite old. We've lived in our house for 4 and three quarter years and it's definitely before our time. Would be interesting to find out when it was though! Will be passing on a copy of the info from this thread to my friend who's a geography teacher as he'd probably find it interesting!! Abi

my area is out of focus. Tested London and it was pretty good Claire

Hi, It must depend on where you live, we used to live in the middle east (Abu Dhabi) and the photos there are definitely less than a year old - (They're building a block of flats on what used to be a car park outside our building). Great for geography for the kids ... Sarah

When it's good it's very, very good: I can pinpoint the desk I'm sitting at in London. Where it's bad it's horrid: I can't even pinpoint my road at home!

Some friends back from Oz told us about this - it is really good of the Isle of Wight. We can see our daughter's old car on the drive and she only visited us here twice with it, so what were the odds? Unfortunately not too clear for the area in we hope to move to in France though! Allie

Yeah I have this on it's really good, I reckon it's about 3 years old as from my house a new motorway built nearby wasn't there and it's only been built in the last 3 years.

Pleased some people have had some success with these pictures. I have not, as yet, managed to visit the National Archives at Kew, London. You build a picture in your mind, of how a place may look. Take a visit using this site. Key in Kew, London then do a local search for National Archives. See it is an ultra modern building near the Thames. When you can see the cars in the car park 'pan around' for nearby places. I found it most interesting. Ray Whincup

They must do updates now and then, when we first checked it out a while back, a very old shopping centre near work was on it, recently when checking it out I noticed it is now a building site! It might get up to date eventually - the new shopping center has been open for 3 years! Suex

Nudged for Rebekah

Some of it has been updated in 2006..............Chadderton near Oldham is a very recent update........my brothers car is outside his house whereas a few months back it wasn't.........my current town is just a mess of blurred green

The quality/ age of the pictures depends on how frequently the satellite has been going over the area, its not a satellite purely for google earth. Thats why the pictures of Baghdad are so good Paula

Google Earth is quite good,my son,Simon,now home safe from the gulf ,has shown me the huts he stayed in while in XXXXX it could be a source of info to anyone with bad intentions! As even dustbins are recognisable Frank H.

Yes they are old pictures aren't they. We couldn't work out the car that was parked right up against our garage doors with ours parked behind it. Then realized that it was my daughters car. She had parked in there when she went on holiday to Portugal for a fortnight about 4/5 years ago, Linda

nudge, thank you, my area / lincolnshire is not very good