Perform Building Inspections From Your Desk

"Instead of just the straight-down views that distant satellites gather, a small company called Pictometry International has developed an oblique-imaging, geo-spatial system to snap vast swaths of America's varied landscape at a 40-degree angle from a few thousand feet in the air...

...So far, the six-year-old company has mapped most of the nation's big cities and 140 of the 3,200 counties where 30 percent of Americans live. Urban and rural zones encompassing 80 percent of the population will be shot by the end of next year, as well as big chunks of Canada, Latin America, Europe and beyond, it said.

'I haven't found any city department that hasn't been able to use the system and make their job a little easier,' Marino said. 'As with everything else, budgets are very tight and you have to do more with the same amount of people or less.' "