Hi,
For years now, I've been using Google Earth on and off. More and more of
New Zealand is now there in good detail, but to this day Hamilton and
most other Waikato towns remain a sad archaic green and white blur.
I wrote to the Hamilton City Council IT department over a year ago,
encouraging them to scan/submit aerial photos, but all I got was a 'we
might look into it one of these days' type of response.
This gave me the thought that there might be an opportunity for WLUG to
boost its profile. What it would require is a small group of volunteers
to learn about the Google Earth submission protocols, to source out the
best available aerial photos, scan them and submit them into Google
Earth.
Perhaps some professional digital graphics companies/people might be
willing to donate some time and effort in exchange for a share of the
publicity. Some of those folks would have pro scanning gear way way
beyond the average humble A4 flatbed.
I'm sure that the Waikato Times and/or Hamilton Press would be very
interested in covering the project, and it could be a good opportunity
for WLUG to extol the virtues of F/OSS here in the Waikato.
Would be a great look for WLUG, Linux etc if the scanned photos were
post-processed with some 1337 GIMP plugins.
Thoughts?
Cheers
David
