Update: As expected, GeoEye has released the satellite image they took of the inauguration today. You can directly download a higher resolution [698KB] version too.

Today, the 20th of January 2009, the USA inaugurates its 44th President: Mr Barack Obama.

To mark the event, Google has brought many image updates to the city of Washington DC (which has unsurprisingly never suffered from poor quality or infrequent imagery updates)¹.

The update also removes the obscuring “blur” that previously covered the Whitehouse and Naval Observatory, albeit through some clever blending of new aerial and older satellite images. Read more about this on Ogle Earth blog.

Obama’s inauguration ceremony will take place to the west of the Capitol Building. Then a parade is held from the Capitol Building to the White House. Google Maps Mania has a summary of several useful maps for viewing the inauguration details and news.com.au have produced a Street View tour of the parade.

The most exciting news however might be that the Google-sponsored imaging satellite, GeoEye-1, will be covering of the event. The satellite will passing over Washington DC at precisely 11:19am, taking unique pictures of the inauguration from its 423 mile-up viewpoint.

These images are likely to be particularly fascinating as the inauguration is expected to draw a record-breaking crowd of over two million people². Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that these images will be included in Google Earth (as they’re lower resolution than the current aerial imagery), but they will be visible on the GeoEye website just a couple of hours after being taken.

For more on the inauguration, Google Latlong have collated some of the best mash-ups, Jason Kottke links to where you can watch it online and finally, if you just want the basic fact of it all, isobamapresidentyet.com answers your burning question.

It’s that time of year again when the team at Google Sightseeing take a well deserved bit of time off!

For the next two weeks we only have a couple of posts planned, but we may still update our twitter feed from time-to-time. We’ll be back to our regular schedule in early January.

Thanks to everyone who has submitted sights, linked to us, written about us, and most importantly, read the site this year!

We would say “happy holidays”, except that would be unfair on people who have to work this festive season, so we’re sticking to the traditional Merry Christmas!

Google’s Street View service continues its spread across the globe with today’s launch in New Zealand.

Skycity in Auckland

Spotted any famous, cool or just weird sites in New Zealand? Let us know!

Apple’s recent iPhone 2.2 update has added Google Maps Street View to the already essential device.

With the iPhone’s pinch-zoom and finger-panning, the experience is even better than on the web.

The only downside is that the iPhone doesn’t automatically load Street View from Google Maps links. This means you have to manually drop a pin to get the Street View mode, and then pan around until you find what you’re looking for. Hopefully, Apple will address this in a future update.

However, as a navigational aide, I can see the iPhone Street View being invaluable – just as soon as they add UK Street Views!

If you’ve always dreamed of being a world-famous blogger, then you can’t do better than “Blog Blazers: 40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets”.

The just-released book by Stephane Grenier features interviews with 40 of the internet’s top bloggers, including the finest of all bloggers James and Alex Turnbull (that’s us!).

Packed with blogging tips, it will make the perfect christmas present (you know, for all those family members who already have the Google Sightseeing Book).

Available now on Amazon.com!