I awoke this morning to find my email inbox bursting with messages along the lines of “OMFG! On Digg there’s a Google Map showing a CRUISE MISSILE in flight!!!!!!!!!one”.

And it was true! While I was asleep over 2500 people Dugg what, at first glance, does look like a cruise missile over Utah. But look closer and you’ll see it’s nothing more than an aeroplane with black wings. Oh well…

Thanks: Rob Monroe, Jonathan Seidman, Trevor, Marco Olivo, Paul B (on fark.com), Zach Penland & Martyn Cox

For once no-one can try to cover up the truth – this is no water tower, no dirt on the lens, and no weather anomaly! Nope, this time we’ve found a real, actual, honest-to-goodness UFO landing on a building in Utrecht, Netherlands! We even managed to find a picture that was taken during the invasion.

Well, it’s a real sculpture of a UFO. That counts, right?

Thanks to P wouterse, Bor Smulders and Ronald.

Yes people, there really is an absolutely enormous seal in The Hague, Netherlands. Apparently it belongs to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and presumably it’s designed to so utterly terrify the seal hunters that they’re unable to ever again harm another seal pup…

However that doesn’t explain why someone else in the Hague has another¹ gigantic seal in their back garden! I’m thinking guard dog. Erm… guard seal.

Thanks to Felippo.

While we were busy scouring the brand new Australia Day images, we failed to notice that Google have also unleashed an absolute wealth of new imagery for the rest of the world! Here’s what’s been updated:

• The entire country of Switzerland at 50cm and many Swiss cities at 25cm. This of course means the Swiss Alps are now high-res, including the Matterhorn – which is incredible seen in Google Earth.

• The entire country of Denmark at 50cm
• The French cities of Lyon; LeMans; Lourdes; Riems; Nancy; Limoges; Lille and Arles
• Potsdam and Magdeburg, Germany
• Barcelona, Belem, CapeTown, Galapagos (Isabella Island), Manaus, Mt Saint Helens, Recife, Rio, Venice)
• Whistler, British Columbia
• The whole states of Wyoming and Utah

It seems here’s also been loads of other Digitalglobe updates too, so what on earth are you waiting for? Get exploring already, and send us what you find!

Thanks to Google Maps Mania and the Google Earth Blog!

There’s some absolutely fantastic looking cars here at the NRMA Motorfest, which was captured in super-high resolution as part of the Australia Day Flyover. The event takes place each Australia Day in Sydney, and is the biggest outdoor display of vehicles in the southern hemisphere.

The full festival programme says other car-oriented events were staged on elsewhere, but I haven’t been able to find any so far. I did find a good Flickr set of the event, but unfortunately it doesn’t name the cars! So I guess we’ll have to rely on the petrol heads to fill us in…

Thanks to… me! Go me