Lately I’ve been playing around a bit with Google Earth, and correspondingly Google Maps, and it’s amazing the kinds of things you can do with it. Unfortunately, their source data for Central Oregon is less than impressive; try to zoom in too tightly and you just get pixelated blobs.
Well, the city of Bend website has put their GIS mapping system online, you can get to it here, and it’s super-detailed (for Bend only) and largely fills that niche that’s missing from Google’s maps. It even has some of the same functionality with their layers option. The only drawback is that it only runs in Internet Explorer 5.5 or greater (and, I’m assuming, Windows).
Still, it’s pretty sweet. I’m already thinking about how to use this data somewhere…
Yeah, when I tried Google Maps for Bend it looked more like an impressionists painting than anything else. Good there’s something else to use.
Google Maps Ain’t Got Nothing on The City of Bend
These satellite images, published by the City of Bend, are far superior to the ones that Google has (though it only works in Internet Explorer, which sucks). Link via Chuggnutt….