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\"Stay on target!\"
2 replies
\"Stay on target!\"
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\"Stay on the bomb run, boys! I'm gonna get them doors open if it harelips ever'body on Bear Creek!\"
--Major T. J. \"King\" Kong
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
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The Wachovia Center in Philly has their logo on the roof of the building.
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CVS does this too sometimes
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Wow, it's almost like they somehow knew there is a popular internet service that shows satellite photos of any place you can search for.
Well.... it IS in Alexandria VA, perhaps Air Force Two can finally find a place to shop.
@sanjsrik: Technically (I'm a nerd)- Air Force Two is the plane carrying the Vice President. It would be Marine One (or Two) to helicopter in.
This target is right across the street from my house and I must have looked at this on Google maps at least 20 times and never noticed it.
I fly into Atlanta and Cincinatti alot, and due to their status as airline hubs I see ads on rooftops like this a fair amount on the approach. The only one that sticks out in my memory is the Target one though, maybe it's a chain thing?
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Don't all Targets do this? I crisscrossed the country about 24 last year, and noticed several Targets have this.
I guess I'm the only one that doesn't really understand GoogleEarth. What good is it to see only the top view of everything? Only good I can think of is for surveyors, but them again, most street addresses are way off when searching (from my use).
@sven.kirk:
I use Google earth to find local parks. A lot of my local parks don't have an accurate address and I use Google Earth as way to find them. Other than that I don't want to wait for it to load.
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@sven.kirk: Why? Because it's totally freaking cool. Try looking up \"Eiffel Tower\", or \"Mount Everest\" on Google Maps in the satellite view, and see what you get.
(Also, it's pretty trippy to look up your own address - I managed to spot my own car sitting on the street in the maps!)
Here's what one couple put on their rooftop, which is right by an airport, to protest the noise (keep in mind that they built the house well after the airport was there...)
And here's a Navy building built in a pre-Google earch era.
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@RedwoodFlyer: The \"Navy building built in a pre-Google earch era\" is a good example of people not looking at the big picture. It's actually a pretty cool monument of sorts (version of the story I've heard, mind you), and can probably only be seen properly from the air. The photo you (and several websites) posted doesn't catch the other interesting buildings in the area, like the two planes attacking the swastika: [maps.google.com]
This particular Target is seen by almost every plane heading north from, or south to Reagan National Airport.
In fact you can see the runway from the parking lot, so the planes are pretty close to the ground as well.
@Gizmosmonster: Thank you! I thought I was the only one thinking this. I fly out of DCA regularly and there is a specific path flights going in and out take due to the security restrictions.
With the popularity of satellite photography, not a bad idea.
So people don't have to guess which building is the target, with a quick glance. I normally look for landmarks on highways in Google guessing by shape and parking lot size, so that makes it easier.
@icantreplyright: Yes, sorry. I got that feeling in my stomach as soon as I hit submit I was like...
wow, I am THAT guy now.Anyway, I liked it enough to dig up my local target.
Have a nice day.
@icantreplyright: I'm glad I saw this, I was going to link to the same Target. I'm pretty sure they do this on all of the targets that are near airports.
Before Google Sat images, the Target Logo was painted on the roof of store by the Chicago airport. This was because some team members (exec's) noticed that the roof was clearly visible during most takeoff's and landings, and this was thought to be a fun and 'free' advertising .. It got quite a bit of buzz when Google made satellite images easily visible.
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&t=k&ll=42.00557119122396,-87.88727760314941&z=16
This wasn't the result of brilliant marketing strategy, it was the result of a culture that allowed risk taking and creativity. Come up with something cool and you could try it. I don't know if the company still has this level of risk taking anymore. But in the mid/late 90's to mid 2004 it was amazing.
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@sven.kirk: At one time you would of kind of had a point.
Even in the past I'd say that its more helpful in an unfamiliar place to have some kind of landmark. Even if I'm looking down on a building or area I can say \"Ok if I hit this ______ I've gone to far\" which I wouldn't get on a normal map.
Now that its got street view and many major metro areas have 3-D renderings you can know exactly what the street you're looking for looks like before you get there. Very useful.
The Bass Pro Shop north of DFW airport has the logo on the roof, but the other one in Dallas (not near an airport) does not.
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hey guys, I've actually seen this on every Target Ive ever been too. It's their signature - they put it on all their stores that are in dense urban areas. Its cheap advertising in a googlemaps-driven world.
Oh I wish a lot of stores did this, it'd make it a lot easier to find the Superstore that's somewhere around N street and X avenue, etc.
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Humans were making images that were visible from the sky long before they could actually fly. The Nazca lines in Peru are the best-known example.
Given that everyone seems to think Google Earth is only going to become a bigger part of everyone's life, I don't see this as being particularly newsworthy or noteworthy.
When I first glanced at the picture and read the headline, I thought the picture was of a microchip (in a motherboard attached to a satellite).
Probably just me.
I just thought it was a way for the ICBM's to find their target?
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@sven.kirk: It's nice if you're buying a house. We pop all of our prospective properties into Google Earth to make sure the areas look decent - e.g. we ixnayed the house with the train tracks in the backyard, and bumped up the one that was within walking distance of a park.
Some of this stuff appears on a regular ole map, but it can be difficult to judge the amount of \"green space\" without a satellite image. Any extra bit of info can be helpful.
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Every single Target has this. It's not a big secret and been there forever. Just fly over one in an airplane.
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I was just talking about this a few days ago. Why aren't more stores doing this? I want to see logos like that all over Google maps. Clubs, butchers, drug stores, bakeries, fast food: your roof should be your icon!
Actually, that store is about a mile south of Washington National Airport, and you can most likely see it if you're coming into (or even flying out of) two of the three runways.
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Grapevine Mills Mall near Dallas/Fr. Worth Airport has a big sign on the roof you can see when you're landing there (using the most common landing patterns).
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yeah, but think of all the free publicity they will get when ET lands there.
Once solar power reaches cost parity with coal, this may be a thing of the past, as all roofs will be covered in black pannels. Just one more thing I can tell the grandkids about our primitive age.
\"In my day, we needed to log on to the internet through a crappy coaxial cable line and find Target via Google Maps. When we wanted to let our friends know we were going, we'd use Twitter. It had just 140 characters, we didn't need or want any more of 'em...\"
I'm surprised there hasn't been more widespread rooftop Google Map vandalism. This just seems ripe for some good Project Mayhem fun.
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The American Express building I used to work at had a huge AMEX logo on their roof. They were on the flight path too, so it was seen by millions of people a year. However, after 9/11 they had to take it down because it was a big, well... 'target' for planes to aim at to try and make a statement. AMEX lost people in the 9/11 attacks since we had offices in the twin towers, so just to be sure the terrorists weren't just trying to take down a credit card company (unlikely. VERY unlikely) they had it removed right away.
I think this Target practice - pun intended - predates Google Maps. It was probably intended to be visible to people flying in airplanes. For another example, see this one in Queens, New York which is under a flight path into La Guardia airport: [maps.google.com]
@sven.kirk: Helps when driving to places I haven't been before. Sure regular maps are ok but its easier to find a small road knowing that it is next to a field or a big building.
Google \"Scientology Vaults, NM\" to see the Scientology message to outer space.
They have a landing strip as well.
This is apparently where they store the sacred founding documents of their \"religion\".
They don't want those paperback novels lost to future generations.
Target also has this logo on their newly opened store right next to the MSP airport. It's not on google maps yet, though...
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I used satellite imagery to find my dad's place in the middle of nowhere. He couldn't give me directions, but he could describe the surrounding area. (Why couldn't he give directions? Don't ask.)
Hey, that's my Target! I always use it as the landmark for when we're flying into National.
And, yeah, I always wondered why they did that. Satellite photos seems like a good reason.
It boggles my mind that stores are not putting their names on the roof. It would make it easier to find the store on Google maps when the address doesn't exactly line you directly over the correct building.
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\"X\" marks the spot to dump the lavatories on the way in to land? :-D
If that's the case, I'd rather it was Mall Wart.
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In an unrelated story, Walmart has recently purchased several surplus bombers.