Posts Tagged ‘Street View’
Next, Google Street View heads for the Amazon River
If you were to come up with a list of places you’re unlikely to stumble across Google’s Street View trike snapping 360 degree panoramics, the banks of the Amazon would surely be pretty close to the top. Yet that’s precisely where the search behemoth’s imaging team is currently focusing its attention. Starting off with a 50 km stretch of the Rio Negro River, the team plans to document life in some our world’s most remote and richly biodiverse regions – visiting local communities, going inside village buildings and floating up and down the waterways to offer virtual visitors a unique insight into the wonders of the Amazon.
Often described as the lungs of the planet, the lush Amazon rainforest has been disappearing at a frighteningly rapid rate at the hands of mankind. Now thanks to Google, much of this immensely important region of the world is about to be saved – albeit digitally. Accepting an invite from the locals, Google’s Brazil and U.S. Street View teams have joined members of the Google Earth Outreach program to share their image collection expertise with non-profit conservation organization Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS).
While in the area, the now-familiar Street View will be seen trundling down the narrow dirt paths that join villages and will capture images of the river, surrounding forests and adjacent river communities. Building interiors will also host an image capture tripod to give us all a sense of what it’s like to live and work in such communities. The teams will also mount the vehicle on a boat and record all-around views of the great river as it floats gently downstream, which will then be stitched together to produce 360 degree panoramas.
On completion of the project, Google will leave behind some technical equipment to allow FAS members to continue their work, and give them the means to share their way of life with the rest of the world.
Rock on!
Japanese woman sues Google for displaying her clothesline
A Japanese woman is suing Google for displaying images of underwear hanging on her washing line on its Street View function.
The woman, who has not been named, is suing the internet giant for 600,000 Yen (£4,588) claiming the images caused her psychological distress, according to Japan’s Mainichi newspaper…
“I was overwhelmed with anxiety that I might be the target of a sex crime,” the woman told a district court. “It caused me to lose my job and I had to change my residence.”
According to the suit, the woman first saw the photo on Google this spring when she did a search for her own apartment, where she lived alone.
The suit claims her existing obsessive-compulsive disorder was worsened by the anxiety brought on by the photo, as she feared that everything she was doing throughout the day was being secretly recorded.
So, loonybirds are allowed to bring suit over their loonybird delusions?
The clothesline is outdoors, right? Will she sue every neighbor with a view of the clothesline?
Anti-privacy vandals target Street View opt-out homes
German home-owners who have chosen to opt out of Google’s Street View service appear to have become the unsuspecting victims of anti-privacy vandals.
Local media report that homes in Essen, west Germany have been pelted with eggs and had ‘Google’s cool’ notices pinned to their doors.
The properties involved have all chosen to be blurred on Google’s Street View service.
So far, this appears to be a one-time bit of anarchy – though most dipshit student anarchists defend their privacy with gusto – figuring it may protect their boring middle-class lives after school.
Street View is rolling out across Germany this month and is proving a hit with users, according to Google.
The German government took a hard line on the service, mandating that citizens be allowed to opt out, before pictures went live. Almost 250,000 Germans requested that Google blur pictures of their homes on the service.
“Body” on Google Street View is girl playing with friends
A girl captured on Google Street View sprawled out in the gutter of a street sparked panic after concerned locals feared cameras had caught a dead body lying on the pavement.
Worried residents spotted the ‘corpse’ lying by a red car as they browsed pictures of Middle Road, in Worcester.
But rather than being a crime scene, the images turned out to just be a youngster playing around with a friend outside her home.
One resident, who did not wish to be named, confirmed the girl pictured lying on the floor was playing with her nine-year-old daughter at the time.
She said: “When we heard about the Street View images we had a look at our street and thought it was really cool.
“Then we noticed the girl lying on the ground which looks a bit strange but thankfully we knew it wasnt anything suspicious…”
The family of the young girl could not immediately be contacted…
A spokesman for Google said: “The imagery in Street View represents a snapshot in time of Britains streets and is no different to what anyone might expect to see for themselves around the country.
“Sometimes that means our cars inadvertently capture odd or inappropriate moments as they drive past.
“This is why we have put in place tools so that if people see what they believe to be inappropriate, they can report them to us using the simple reporting tool and the images will be quickly removed or further blurring applied.”
Cripes! I’ll bet some people thought they had found an undiscovered murder and screamed for the coppers.
Did they think a body was left lying around the neighborhood – waiting, I guess, for a clean-up crew to happen along?
Did Google buy UAV to spy on you?
Secret Nazi World War II experimental drone – uncovered by the Register
Google is planning to use unmanned “spy drones” like those used by special forces to improve its maps, according to an aircraft manufacturer.
Sven Juerss, the chief executive of Microdrones GmbH, a German firm which builds unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has said that his company has supplied Google with one aircraft already and expects to provide “dozens” more in the future.
However, Google has moved swiftly to deny that the purchase was for company use – Peter Barron, a spokesman for the firm’s UK office, told the Telegraph: “Google is not testing or using this technology. This was a purchase by a Google executive with an interest in robotics for personal use…”
The UAV, known as a “hicam microdrone”, is less than 1m wide and weighs less than a kilogram. It has four battery-powered rotors and can stay in the air for more than an hour. It navigates itself automatically and can take high-quality photographs of large areas beneath it…
It seems likely that the drones will start a new Google privacy row, despite the shots not being significantly different from existing aerial photography. Street View, the ground-level photography of the world’s streets, sparked controversy as various photographs were claimed to invade people’s privacy. The pictures included images of celebrities’ and politicians’ houses, people leaving sex shops and one image of a naked three-year-old boy.
Geeks of all flavors, monomaniac libertarians – have another opportunity to join forces with more traditional religious nutballs and protest this obvious invasion by Techno-Overlords. And let’s don’t leave out those who turn class divisions inside out and treat anyone part of a corporate entity larger than three people selling vanilla ice cream – as an evil empire.
No matter. Techno-paranoia produces lockstep blather and noise as predictably as a Gay interracial couple on holiday walking into a church for a few photos.
Who is the real Horse-boy?
Mystery surrounds a man wearing a horse’s head who has been captured on Google’s Street View in Aberdeen.
The man – who has become known as “horse-boy” – can be seen in the Hardgate area of the city. The sighting has become a popular attraction on Google’s service, which offers a photographic map of streets…
Dozens of BBC news website users have e-mailed from across Europe to say they know who horse boy is. Others have sent in images of the mystery horse-head wearer and some have claimed to be him.
Stefan Kleen from Germany said he and a friend met horse-boy at a German festival last weekend. He added: “He only spoke English so we didn’t really talk a lot to him.”
Anders Hauge reckons he has been shopping in Haugesund in Norway; John Hammond was convinced he was playing the fairways and relaxing in the bars of Marbella and Julian Sykes said he had been sighted in Cardiff.
John Ainsworth insisted he saw horse-boy in Norwich earlier in the year walking through Wensum Park. He said: “I thought I was hallucinating at first but then realised it was real.”
The BBC news website story has had more than 800,000 hits.
That is the point – for some. For the dude who owns the horse’s head? Who knows?
I presume he’s having fun.
Google Dashboard checks how public your privacy is!
In a big concession to users’ privacy rights, Google launched what it calls Google Dashboard – a tool which gives Google account holders a single view of all of the data associated with their Google accounts.
The Google Dashboard is being touted as a way for users to, at a glance, see information about their Web usage, email usage and more when they are logged into Google services such as Gmail, YouTube and Google Calendar. Google provides an overview of the Dashboard in a video in its main blog. Dashboard will let users delete information as well, a move that could help to address privacy concerns that have been raised surrounding Google’s collection of so much data about its users’ online habits.
On the left-hand side of the screen, Google Dashboard lists items such as Contacts, Docs, and Gmail, while on the right-hand side, users can drill down through functions such as “edit personal information,” “sharing documents,” and “manage chat history.” There is also a “privacy and security help” area…
Indeed, some of Google’s earlier products have bowed to users’ privacy, particularly Piracy Center, an area that educates users about Google’s privacy policies…
At the same time, though, Google has raised the privacy hackles of some users with features such as Social Search, a function which grabs relevant public content from your friends’ and contacts’ blogs and social networking pages, and Google Maps Street View.
I have to chuckle over some of the cowardly lion pretenses that thread most “outrage” about privacy on the Web.
Most of the info people whine about are self-entries. If your shorts truly are in a bunch over the rest of this crap – there are means and methods for defeating them. Starting with various flavors of anonymizers.
Preserve me from pundits who preach to the converted and don’t practice anything even elemental regarding their own personal privacy on the Web. There ain’t too many of these Freedom Fighters who don’t use Facebook and Twitter to promote their own agenda.
Dutch thugs caught by Google street view camera car
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Dutch twin brothers who mugged a teenager in the northern town of Groningen were arrested after being caught on camera by a car gathering images for Google’s online photo map service, police said.
The pair stole the 14-year-old boy’s mobile phone and 165 euros in cash last September.
“The picture was taken just a moment before the crime,” a police spokesman said.
In March, the victim recognized himself and the two robbers while surfing Google Maps, which has a “Street View” feature allowing users to see images of buildings. The images are usually taken by a camera mounted on a car.
After an investigation by the police, one of the 24-year-old twins confessed to robbing the boy.
Har!
Google street view trike at the Trevi Fountain
Upper class Brits as dumb about Street View as California politician
After a recent spate of burglaries, residents of Broughton, a village in Buckinghamshire, UK, formed a human chain around, and hurling insults at, a Google Street View car, refusing to allow it inside the hamlet.
A spate of burglaries in the Buckinghamshire village of Broughton caused residents to spring into action when the Google Street View car puttered towards Broughton with a 360-degree camera on its roof. The villagers formed a human chain to stop it, haranguing the driver about “invasion of privacy” fears, claiming a belief that the images Google planned to put online could be used by burglars.
Meanwhile, in Lala-land…
Joel Anderson, a Republican California state assemblyman from San Diego County, wants to make sure that the terrorists can’t win. Because obviously, the only thing that’s allowing them to commit heinous acts is having access to the Internet. Specifically, to services like Google Earth.
About a month ago, Anderson introduced Assembly Bill 255, which would fine Web sites and other online services up to $250,000 per day for not blurring out schools, places of worship, medical facilities, or government sites on satellite or aerial imagery. The same restriction would apply to street-level shots like Google Maps’s Street View feature. Knowingly violating this law could also result in jail time of up to 3 years for the operator.
In an interview with CNET, Anderson said: “Well, I looked at where we’ve had security issues in the past and potentially, might have issues in the future. Churches and synagogues have been bombed. So have federal buildings and then, of course, 9/11. So, the threats are out there and as a state legislator, public safety is my No. 1 job. To ignore that fact would be irresponsible.”Anderson said:
Knowing WTF you’re talking about might also be too much a stretch for this dumbass politician.
I know. That’s redundant. Dumbass and politician.
It’s just that this sort of absurdity has been hollering in my ears all my life. It trails its stink back into recorded history to the edicts of Nero – and probably will afflict thoughtful humans ten centuries from now. Time doesn’t make it any more bearable.
