Big Brother is watching you.

OK, let me tone that down a bit. Although the Orwellian nightmare of a tyrannical, all-knowing government supported by pervasive surveillance technology hasn't yet arrived, something that looks just a little bit like it was recently released by Google.

You may know about Google Maps, which offers a faster, better-looking (and much cooler under-the-hood technologically) alternative to map and driving directions Web sites such as MapQuest.

Well, they upped the ante by adding a "satellite" view to the service, which combines roadway information with color satellite imagery captured by recent Google acquisition Keyhole Corporation.

Don't get me wrong -- I think this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen on the Internet. It's just a little creepy.

Wanna see? Head over to maps.google.com, then click "Satellite" in the upper-right-hand corner. The traditional U.S. map with state names and borders is changed to a stunning picture of what our country looks like from space. From there, you can pan around using the arrows on your keyboard or zoom in using the slider on the left.

That's fine for a little while. But things really get interesting when you start typing specific cities or even addresses into the text box at the top of the page.

Try "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C." to start. The more astute among you will not be surprised to see satellite imagery of President George W. Bush's house, with other (apparently Photoshopped for national security purposes) national landmarks in the same general area.

Think of it as you watching Big Brother.

If you're anything like me, you'll immediately start trying to find your childhood house, the Hollywood sign, the Grand Canyon and so forth. Odds are you'll have pretty good luck if you're patient and fairly good at orienting yourself. At first it's a little weird to look at traditional buildings from a bird's-eye view, but you get used to it pretty quickly.

You'll quickly notice that some areas (State College among them) don't have particularly high-resolution imagery available. It seems to be that areas with higher population density have more detailed photos available. Try typing in "New York, NY" if you don't believe me.

In some places, you can see individual cars, trees, even airplanes. You'll never see individual people, and most images are at least a few months old, so you don't really need to worry about privacy violations.

Still, I have to assume that defense agencies have much better satellites that can zoom in much further than can the satellites that provide the publicly available Google Maps images.

Google Sightseeing, www.shreddies.org/gmaps, has a pretty decent list of interesting locations you can look at, such as the CIA headquarters, Warner Brothers Studios and even Google's corporate offices. You can look at stadiums, such as the one the San Francisco 49ers play at (which just happened to have a full parking lot at the time the photo was taken) and even Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia with a nascent Citizens Bank Park nearby.

More disturbingly, you can even view a shot of Baghdad in April 2003 just as an American bomb was exploding there.

One really cool feature of Google Maps is that it can actually show you the route you need to take between two places with a line on the satellite imagery.

I'm not sure if that's entirely useful or not, but it's pretty neat to get a new perspective on drives you make.

Google seems to be releasing pretty amazing technologies on a fairly regular basis -- they make it look routine. At first, the technologies might not seem to make much sense, but over time a fuller strategy becomes clear. For example, when you search for a city in Google Maps, you can also search white pages information, which could allow you to find restaurants, for example.

I'm not sure the role that satellite images play in the overall Google picture (assuming there is one), but I'd love to hear your take on it.

Just don't tell me it's Google playing Big Brother.