CHeriCoS

As announced at the Google Lat Long Blog and several news sites and blogs (at least in germany, e.g. FAZ and Golem or Archivalia and Cibera) Google and the Prado Museum has joined in a real impressive project. But let me ask you a question first: Where in the world is Carmen ... oops ... this man with a pole in his hands? If you are not at least a art historian with a favour for renaissance art you will hardly know. This guy "lives" in spain (formerly germany), is about one third of an inch tall and can be found on the famous self-portrait - well, not as famous as this one - of Albrecht Dürer. Due to the fantastic work done at the Prado with the help of Google now you can check yourself just by sitting in your chair and browsing the web. 14 Masterpieces have been digitized in high resolution and combined with Google Earth's zooming technology. And the resolution really IS high! To quote Clara Rivera Rodriguez from the Google Spain division:

The paintings have been photographed in very high resolution and contain as many as 14,000 million pixels (14 gigapixels). With this high level resolution you are able to see fine details such as the tiny bee on a flower in The Three Graces (Las Tres Gracias), delicate tears on the faces of the figures in The Descent from the Cross (El Descendimiento ) and complex figures in The Garden of Earthly Delights (El Jardin de las Delicias)

See the Prado website for more information. You don't have Google Earth? Well, take a look at the Prado in (less) high resolution at Google Maps. And there is still more to come. They claim that after a initial phase every day a new image will appear. If you are interested in this kind of image technology, you should check out Microsoft's SeaDragon/Photosynth too. In some way it represents a much more exciting and innovative approach to image visualisation. A good starting point is a short speech at Ted by Blaise Aguera y Arcas.