Dr Jeff Cornwall

Many small business owners are turning to tools like Google Earth as a bootstrapping tool to bid jobs and prospect for clients. These tools allow free access to areal images that can offer amazing detail of specific locations. Many of these tools are free, but some charge a small annual fee to get premium services.
From the Wall Street Journal:

Roofers aren’t the only ones taking advantage of aerial mapping — landscapers, pool maintenance people, real-estate agents and insurance companies are also using such services. In some cases, they’re checking out specific locations where they’re bidding for or working on a job. In others, they’re perusing the images for signs — such as pools or big lawns — indicating homes that might be potential clients for their services.

Here is a sample of an image from one of these tools, zilow.com, which is geared toward real estate. The image is of Belmont University. My office is in the complex of buildings toward the top, right center of the image (the dark roofed building that looks like a backwards “L”). To illustrate that these images are very accurate, take a look at the parking lot to the right of the building complex in the upper right of the image — you can make out cars in the lot. To illustrate that these images can be dated, those parking lots are now our new Inman Health Sciences building that has been open for about a year.
Here is the same image from Google Earth (also missing the new building):

To illustrate how these tools can be used, here is an example. We recently fenced in our backyard. We needed to get the fence stained, so I called a couple of painters recommended by the local paint store. One of them had to drive about 50 miles round trip just to take about five minutes to measure the backyard. He could have used one of these tools to get a view of our yard and placed a bid based on what would be a fairly accurate measurement. Since he could not see the fence this way, he would have been wise to make the bid contingent on the height and style of the fence being what I told him over the phone. The really bad news for him was that after taking over an hour to drive to my house to get the information he needed to make a bid, he did not get the job.