ICP, a crew of graffiti artists in the San Francisco area, have tagged up this roof and thanks to the passing photography plane have gained more exposure than they probably expected. My initial worries that the tag was related to the dreadful Insane Clown Posse were thankfully incorrect and I found a nice piece by the crew on Flickr.

The other tag looks to be the work of “tezist”, and the smaller, more stylized tag is just too small to read.

Thanks: Thykka

Brand new on Google Maps/Earth this week is Fort Boyard, located between the Île d’Oléron and the Île-d’Aix in the Pertuis d’Antioche straits, on the west coast of France. It was designed to bridge the gap between the two islands, as the cannons of the time couldn’t protect such a large space.

Construction began under Napoleon in 1801, but unfortunately wasn’t finished until 1857 – by which time the range of cannons had increased, and the fort was utterly redundant.

Which is a bit like buying a PC that has become obsolete by the time Windows is finished installing. The parallels continue in fact – seemingly for lack of any better ideas, Fort Boyard eventually became a prison.

Fort Boyard is certainly a scary looking place – although these days mostly for the thought of the truly terrible TV show of the same name that’s now filmed there (the oil rig type structure on the west side was built for the TV crews).

Thanks to Yuri.

P.S. There’s loads of new stuff being uncovered by this week’s image update, so why not see if you can grab yourself an exclusive, and get submitting those sights!

Man, there’s a whole heap of people in Trafalgar Square since the latest image update. Does anyone know what they’re all doing?

Update: dda worked it out – this is the 29th of January 2006, and we’re seeing several thousand Chinese celebrating the first day of the Year of the Dog. See my comment for photo links.

Thanks to Patryk.

Amongst several other interesting kite-shadows here at the Lincoln City Summer Kite Festival, Oregon, is the perfect outline of a giant sky-blue teddy bear!

The huge flying teddy is 12 metres long, and you can actually pick one up in your own choice of colour for only 6,000 New Zealand dollars (about 4,000 bucks, or 2,000 quid), although it’s extra to have your own design printed on his shirt.

Hmmm . . . perhaps we could promote our new book with a ‘Google Sightseeing Bear’!

(Shameless plug over.)

Also in this area is the D River, which Oregon reckons is the shortest river in the world – whereas the Guinness Book of World Records states that the Roe River in Montana is the shortest at 61 metres. Either way, I think Oregon is understating the length of their river, as 36 metres (or 3 Giant Teddy Bears) looks completely wrong to me!

Wikipedia: D River, Roe Rover.

Thanks to Jim Martin, Tim Forsyth and Andy.

With the recent image updates to central London we can see how they’re getting on with the controversial Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport.

The aerial image was taken earlier this year and although there’s been some progress they still have a lot of work to do before it whole thing opens in 2011, by which point BAA will likely have spent over £4.2 billion.

These days that sort of money buys you 60 aircraft stands, 2 satellite terminals, a new control tower, a new motorway junction, a 4000 space car park, a new hotel, bored tunnel rail links, diversion of two rivers and the design of a roundabout to say “T5″.

Thanks: Adam