Big Brother Can Watch You, Gigapixel Style

There is something to be said for aerial photography. It's a great way to see the city on the large. It's expensive to take and it's not very interactive unless you know a pilot and can hop a ride to go check out the sites yourself. There is a company based in LA that is using technology to provide not only an aerial, zoomable view, but also panoramas and time lapse photography using gigapixel digital technology. We found this version (shown left) of a zoomable Copley Square as proof of the wonderment that is technology. And we thought that 10.2 megapixels was the new hotness. xRes: Extreme Resolution Large Scale Image Creation currently features an incredibly high resolution image of Copley Square and Back Bay as taken from above this summer (you can see the cow parade below). Looking in from what we can see of the same scene from Google Maps there's little more than a shadow of the John Hancock tower covering the same area. The Prudential sky walk was the site of the photography that was pulled together to make this panorama. We're hoping that Big Brother doesn't get a hold of this technology, it's a little scary what can be photographed from the top of the Pru, especially if you're paranoid.