The other day, Windows Live Local added high-resolution aerials of Edinburgh, and Alex and I promptly wasted hours and hours finding everything there was to see in our home city and arguing about the exact date the photos were taken.

I know we’re called Google Sightseeing, but I can’t resist posting Edinburgh Live Local sites, such as the Museum of Scotland, the flumes at the Commonwealth Swimming Pool, where I was married last year, where I studied at University and the Scott Monument. I could fill a whole website with these!

Anyway, one of the coolest things I found was this helicopter parked in the Meadows (a large park just beside Edinburgh University) and it reminded me of a Google Earth story which I’d meant to run a few weeks ago…

On December 1st, 2005 the Spanish opposition leader Mariano Rajoy hopped on a Police Helicopter which departed from a bullring in Mostoles, Spain and later crashed just outside the stadium, luckily no-one was badly injured.

Google Earth users spotted this picture of a helicopter in the bullring, and following some investigation, deduced that this satellite photo is in fact a picture of the helicopter that crashed on that very day, presumably only a few hours before departure.

Thanks: Simone & Amio Cajander

This is the Armadillo in Glasgow.

Oh all right, it’s really the Clyde Auditorium, but everyone calls it the Armadillo. It was designed to be a 3,000 seat extension to the boxy beige building to the north – the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, which was the largest exhibition hall in the whole of the UK anyway.

Obviously comparisions have been made between the design of the Cylde Auditorium and that of the Sydney Opera House, and yet the architects, Foster and Partners, claim it wasn’t the inspiration for the design.

I agree, it looks more like they just stole it outright.

Thanks to Tom.

It looks like the pilot of a small aircraft has crashed into Juhu garden in Mumbai!

Actually, it turns out that this plane has never flown: it has no engine and is made of concrete, which I hear is not the most aerodynamic of materials. Submitter Rushikesh tells us that it is part of a kid’s playpark, and that you can get inside the cockpit and pretend like your flying it!

Thanks: Rushikesh Jukar

We’re currently in the process of moving Google Sightseeing to dedicated hosting. And, if you’re reading this, it’s worked!

Google Sightseeing now has its own dedicated server from EV1 Servers, so everything round here should be pretty speedy. The setup with EV1 went very smoothly, expect for their “thanks for buying a server” courtesy call at 3am – my wife was not amused.

So, we’re now fully equipped to handle any slashdotting/diggin/boingboinging traffic you send our way, and then some. However, if you do happen to get any errors on the site please leave a comment on this thread and we’ll get it fixed ASAP.

Update: The Akismet spam plugin was eating all the comments so I’ve temporarily disabled it. Your comments should get through now, but we may get spammed lots. Let’s wait and see how it goes…

As reported by both the Google Earth Blog and Ogle Earth, Microsoft has provided an awesome update to the UK satellite imagery on their Live Local service. (I still can’t work the zoom tool unfortunately, has anyone else noticed that dragging the slider sends the zoom the wrong way?)

Anyway, despite being a little disappointed that I have to use Live Local to see it, I’m nonetheless very pleased to be able to scroll around high-res imagery of Google Sightseeing’s home town for the first time! Yes, Edinburgh, along with loads of other places in the UK is now covered with some fantastic quality shots. They even managed to capture Edinburgh on a sunny day!

In our thumbnail you can see the world famous Edinburgh Castle, which has the seating in place on the Castle Esplanade for the yearly Tattoo, which takes place at the same time as the Festival. However the tent for the book festival tent hasn’t been erected yet, which places these images around late July. Furthermore, Ocean Terminal hasn’t been finished yet, so I reckon this is probably July 2000.

I could post a bazillion things from Edinburgh (like where I used to skateboard, my primary school or my house) but I won’t. I hereby promise only to post things which other people submit!

P.S. Mac users note that Live Local still doesn’t work in Safari.

Thanks to Jenni, Nev and Simon.