This looks interesting. Google has bought a company called Skybox, which has satellite photogrammetry services. It looks like, for a price, Google will be bringing real-time earth imaging to the desktop.
http://skybox.com/
I wonder what the service will cost?
Me too! How much? I know that the insurance folks are using a pay version for wild-land fire that lets them determine slope of hill, and distance from structure of brush. They can tell if you have your 100 to 400 feet of clearance and fairly real time.
This is a game changer in a lot of ways!
Inside of five years off-the-shelf drones will replace satellites for more than 75% of the populated area in the US.
I fly RC planes and copters and we started taking aerial pics ten years ago. The tech today is amazing.