This is brilliant. A guy who got rich during the dotcom era is photographing every inch of the California coastline from a helicopter
The camera is linked with a cable to the helicopter’s global positioning system, and to an Apple Power Book laptop. Every three seconds, he snaps a picture, and the exact longitude, latitude and altitude are recorded.
Adelman said he will spend about $20,000 to photograph the whole coast, and take about 10,000 pictures in all. He has finished about 60 percent, including nearly everything from Marin County to Los Angeles. He expects to finish the rest of Southern California this week. One area, over Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County, is in restricted air space and Adelman is still working to get permission to photograph
This is what computers and the Internet are for. The fact that this project can be undertaken–and made universally available–for so little money amazes me.
Why is he doing this? I’m sure that once he is done, people will find all kinds of fascinating but unintended uses for it. His motive is environmental preservation. Check it out at californiacoastline.org.
That is fascinating … I’m sure you are right about people finding uses for it later. That will be interesting, to hear about the unforeseen uses.