Archive for May 31st, 2007

2007.05.31

Smile, You’re on Google Maps!

On Tuesday Google unleashed a new feature on their Google Maps. It’s called Street View and allows you to zoom in to the level of the street and see what the outside of buildings look like and move about the streets of the city almost just like playing the old game Myst except without the puzzles. So far it looks like they’ve only got San Francisco, Las Vegas, Denver, New York City and Miami in the system but they have people driving their cameras around other cities taking pictures.

Unfortunately there are already complaints coming in of all the invasion of privacy issues. You can see people’s faces, license plates, and sometimes into their living rooms. Still, the pictures were taken on public streets and are, therefore, technically legal. Google has provided a means to report inappropriate views of people and/or buildings.

That being said a lot of people are having fun spotting strange photos (I found an odd one… teabagging?!?) and intrepid searchers have even found me loitering about txting a friend.

It’s an interesting project and I can’t wait to see what other people find…