aerial imagery
Co-ordinated marketing
A little while back I was having a pint or two with my brother in a local pub when he spotted the offer of a promotional t-shirt for customers who were drinking the Fullers Discovery Blonde Beer. By the end of the night, they kindly gave us two of the t-shirts to take home (we got the impression they had quite a few left to give away).
The t-shirts had marketing for the Discovery beer on the front and, in the spirit of the name, also had a compass on the back with a pair of geographic coordinates within it. Recognising them as coordinates in the London area, I didn't think too much more about it, presuming they were the coordinates of the pub that was selling the beer, or of the Fullers Brewery that produced it, but it wasn't until the other day that I actually tapped the coordinates (51º29'15.24"N, 0º14'56.96"W) into Google Maps and - after switching to the satellite imagery view - discovered that this was all a part of the brewery's larger marketing strategy.
Presumably not too far off the flight path for Heathrow airport, and always under the attentive gaze of the electronic eyes in the sky, the Fuller's Brewery had used the prime marketing real estate of their roof to advertise themselves to the world. Of course this isn't a new strategy, with many other companies and organisations doing the same thing around airport areas for year, but the coordinated (excuse the pun) approach did strike me as a nice way to market their product.
Having said that, unlike in the early days in the web when, purely out of curiosity, I'd visit any URL I saw advertised, I don't think I'd do the same with a pair or coordinates that I saw on the back of someone's t-shirt...
Note: Aerial imagery copyright Google
Aerial Imagery of the Isle of Man: now on Google Maps
After a long wait, Google has updated their aerial imagery to include high resolution imagery of the Isle of Man. The imagery is available through both Google Maps and Google Earth.
You can now explore the Island's towns (e.g. Castletown, Douglas or Ramsey), glens (e.g. Silverdale Glen, Glen Helen and Glen Maye), historic monuments (e.g. Lady Isabella or the Laxey Wheel, Corrin's Tower on Peel Head, Peel Castle, Castle Rushen in Castletown and Derby Fort on Fort Island, Langness) and the only mountain (Snaefell) or anything else that can be seen from above.
Unfortunately there still isn't any name data, so it's much easier if you know what you're looking for when exploring.
Update: I see from the Isle of Man Newspapers website - Improved Isle of Man images on Google Earth - that the imagery being included in Google's database is dated 2006 and is the result of "months of negotiations involving the Department of Local Government and the Space Commerce Division of the Treasury."
