Wired on Friday/Carol Power: The images from the war in Iraq are clearer, more precise and certainly more compelling than during the last Gulf war 12 years ago.

Most of the correspondents travelling with the US troops in Kuwait and Iraq are using hand-held videophones to record their live segments from remote regions. Television viewers can see for the first time, with some degree of accuracy, the targets that the US military have pinpointed using satellite technology.

During this war, many people are tuning in to their computers each day, from work and at home, to see video footage from cameras on the ground.

Last week, research firm Neilsen/NetRatings reported that traffic to general and financial news sites skyrocketed during the week ending March 23rd, the first full week of the war.

Many of the top news online destinations posted double- and triple-digit growth with consumption during the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. work week outpacing activity at home.

CNN.com broke the 10-million mark at work, increasing its traffic by 58 per cent from the previous week. Surfers visiting MSNBC.com totalled more than 8.3 million, soaring 38 per cent and Yahoo News recorded a 21 per cent increase to 6.5 million.

Bigger bandwidth and smaller recording gadgets have transformed coverage of the war. More satellites, which orbit the earth several times a day, and high-speed internet lines in the desert, allow journalists to make connections from just about anywhere.

A prototype compact satellite dish used by NBC provides internet access and multiple telephone connections, and is a lot more reliable than a huge satellite dish, which in the case of ABC blew off the roof of a building in northern Iraq.

At times, reporters travelling with the military are prohibited from using their satellite phones, which can connect to laptop computers, for fear of giving away their location.

The wireless globe brings far-off countries closer to home and transports bird's-eye views of foreign cities into our living rooms. Instead of paper maps, the military is using digital images from commercial satellite providers such as Space Imaging and DigitalGlobe, both based in Colorado.

In July last year, Mr George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, ordered his agency to turn over all mapping requirements to commercial companies. The images provided by these companies are also available to the public.

Space Imaging, which sells mapping data, introduced the world's first high-resolution commercial earth-imaging satellite IKONOS on September 24th, 1999.

In 2001, DigitalGlobe set up the most powerful satellite available, with a resolution of two feet. High-speed data links allow the images to be loaded onto laptops and taken onto the battlefield. Commercial software programs allow those studying the images to combine them with intelligence data to create 3-D representations.

For example, the EarthViewer3D, from a privately held company called Keyhole, gives television stations such as CNN, ABC and CBS a new perspective on world events. The aerial views come from high-resolution satellites located hundreds of miles above the earth.

The images are available on the Web once you have a PC, a broadband link and the EarthViewer3D software.

It is estimated that about 70 million Americans have high-speed internet access, which makes it easier to view videos, photographs and interactive maps, and to listen to audio interviews.

Analysts from the National Imagery and Mapping Agency can help the military on the ground by comparing new satellite map data to old maps.

The agency was set up seven years ago as an arm of the Department of Defence after the last Gulf War and brought together existing agencies such as the National Photographic Interpretation Centre and the Central Imaging Office.

Now the US government is the commercial satellite companies' biggest customer.

According to GlobalSecurity.org, military planes can pick out targets from 40,000 feet high in the air. Based on intelligence, the satellites tell the pilots what targets to hit regardless of the weather and the cruise missiles keep striking their targets.

But mapping mistakes can happen. For example, in 1999 during the Kosovo war, the United States accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade based on information from an outdated map.

On the local front, three years ago, New York State's Interactive Mapping Gateway made its public debut and provided the first internet site in the world to offer comprehensive and free public access for viewing and downloading digital orthoimagery.

This means that users could view aerial photographs to find a specified street address or areas of interest. Within its first year, more than 100,000 files were downloaded and more than two million maps were generated.

The New York State Office for Technology is proceeding with a statewide digital orthoimagery program, which will create high-resolution orthoimagery for a portion of the state each year. The orthoimagery is produced at a resolution and clarity that is 20-times greater than current imagery.

Total land area for the new digital orthoimagery in the first year was about 12,300 square miles.

The second annual lot last year produced digital orthoimagery for 19 counties in the western portion of New York state for a total of about 11,500 square miles.