Google Earth Blog and Google Maps Mania are reporting new satellite imagery updates across many US towns available in Google Maps (but, at the moment, not in Google Earth). I won’t bother repeating the lists of what is new, as without an official announcement new sections are still being discovered.

The new imagery seems to be mostly satellite photography from DigitalGlobe, who also supplied the bulk of the excellent satellite photographs for Off the Map (US) and Not in the Guide Book (UK) – both available early November.

Some classic ‘Large Type’ action in Brazil – Casas Bahia is the largest retail chain in Brazil, and proudly display their logo on the roof.

They have a complex numbering scheme for their buildings – you’ll see that this is number 1 and to the West is number 2. I spent a while considering why they’ve numbered the buildings on the roof but I gave in and decided to post it anyway

Thanks: Ivan

Mumbai’s most famous monument, the Gateway of India was traditionally the first thing visitors arriving by boat would see of the city. The Gateway is 26 metres high and was built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary (although the city was called Bombay back then), and fittingly, it was through the Gateway that the last British troops passed as they left India for good.

You can see there’s lots of tourists milling around here, and you can also see the boats which might to take you to the famous caves of Elephanta Island – which were hewn from the living rock between the 9th and 13th centuries and contain many magnificent carvings.

There’s also thousands of other cool things to look at around here (Mumbai has the highest population of any city in the world after all) – so why not take a wander and send us what you find!

Wikipedia: The Gateway of India and the Elephanta Caves. Thanks to Kim Singh, Rushikesh Jukar and Shreeraj Doshi.

Heading down the shops you might walk, maybe cycle or probably take the car. There’s not many people who do the weekly errands in a MiG-21 fighter.

Sadly it turns out that this plane is always in the car park on permanent display. There’s ground level pictures on Airliners.net including one of the plane back in 2003, just after it fell of its pedestal and crushed a parked VW Golf.

Wikipedia: MiG-21

Thanks: Mikky

We feel sure that the undoubtedly great, and now very sadly late Steve Irwin wouldn’t blame the stingray that brought about his untimely demise for a single second. In fact we reckon that Steve probably wouldn’t want these normally very passive creatures getting a bad reputation, as he was one of only a handful of people who have ever been recorded as being killed by one.

So in Steve’s honour, we’d like to welcome you to the Cayman Islands very own Stingray City, a series of shallow sand bars where stingrays are found in abundance and visitors can feed, pet, and swim with these incredible creatures. Around each of those boats, you can clearly see the dark shapes of their bodies as the rays congregate to be fed by tourists.

This post is dedicated to Steve, his wife Terri, and their young family.

More on Steve Irwin, Stingray City, the Cayman Islands and of course Stingrays, at Wikipedia.