I just found out about this today. You basically zoom in on any of those cities with a camera on them and click on any street that is outlined and blue and you get a 360 panorama in high resolution. If you find something worth looking at , post it. Would be kind of awkward if you found yourself though. The best part is zooming in on the cars around you and just checking out whos inside. I can't imagine how they did it though. Driving around the whole city must of taken forever. Can't wait till they do Houston. So far its San Francisco and surronding cities, Denver, Las Vegas, New York, and Miami.
Definitely would be awkward seeing yourself... Here Apparently that's a guy who was walking out of a strip club, lol. Link should work.
Holy **** this is crazy! I found my apt complex which is pretty neat. And LOL at the strip club guy HAHAHA!
There was so something about it on the news the other day saying it invaded privacy. But, you can only see things that the public can see, don't see what the big deal is.
I think it would be awesome if I can see myself on this once Houston gets one of these. Depending on how often they update their pics, I'd be sure to pose in something different every time!
From a programmer's stand, I can see that it wouldn't take "forever", but driving through the streets and actually being in the middle line was tough I know, for a fact. Let's say you are a cameraman. You have EIGHT cameras attached to you at angles different angles that take wide shots. Think of four cameras at 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock and the rest in between them. If you are standing at a street meeting another street, your first shot is right under the traffic light, and let's call that shot A for that street. As you travel west, you keep taking 1 picture every 100 feet or so, and the second shot is B and the third is C and the fourth at 400 feet is D for that street, or however the numbering system goes. You just have to let the position at street level be known to the web flash application. It's programmatically possible, really.
Read this a few days ago.. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/06/01/google.candid.camera.ap/index.html
I had an offer from YouTube, INC, to work in their Web Design programs... I remembered they're in San Bruno... so I StreetView'd them... Here is YOUTUBE, INC.
It's not like these are live cams where you can follow people around...Don't really see how anyone's privacy is being violated. I could have seen the same sights walking down the street 6 months ago.
This site has been causing a bit of an uproar for the past few weeks because of the invasion of privacy angle. The guy coming out of the strip club is immortalized now, so are the 2 girls sunbathing on a lawn, and a criminal that apparently was busted as he scaled the side of a building to burglarize it (lol). The VW Beatles (?) that drive around taking pics of these are freaky looking .... they have this pod coming up from the top of their roofs with a bunch of lenses on them - like a big round ball with a bunch of eyes. I can see how people can be pissed about it, but eh, whatever.
Yeah, but the argument is that it's different when 1 person sees something you don't want them seeing and an entire planet virally being informed of something you don't want known. FYI : these vehicles either update or take new pics something like once a year or less, I believe, and Google will remove pics if you ask them to.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/30/google_maps_is_spyin.html Google Maps is spying on my cat, says freaked out BB reader BoingBoing reader Mary Kalin-Casey says, The new Google Maps zoom feature zooms all the way into my living room window. See cat on cat perch. I'm all for mapping, but this feature literally gives me the shakes. I feel like I need to close all my curtains now. I'm going to look into whether it's possible for a person to have pictures of their home removed from Google Maps. Meanwhile, I'm happy to show bb readers the photo in the interest of illustrating creepy privacy violations. Heck, the whole world can see him anyway.
