Most of my town, Birmingham, Alabama, is now on Google Maps Street View. If you haven’t discovered this yet, you should read the Wikipedia article on it to get a flavor. Short version, Google is in the process of driving fleets of cars on every street in the world, taking 360 degree images (actually, sort of half-spheres) every few feet. So, you can go to mapped area on the Internet and “drive” or “walk” down the streets. You have to see it to get it.
This is astounding to me. Just think of the volume of data. Think of all the cars and all the miles driven. It’s uncanny.
But realistically I already use google maps a lot to figure out where I’m going if I’m driving somewhere I haven’t been before. Actually being able to see what the place looks like at street level would be even more useful. Also google maps is already on my phone, how handy would it be to stick an address in your phone and see a view from the same level as your own height to check if you’re in the right place?
I actually found that function useful when I was looking for places to rent when I decided to move. I wasn’t familiar with every area of the city I decided to move to, and knew that some areas had changed since I last knew them, so it was nice to find an address and be able to call up a photo of it and the surrounding neighborhood. Was able to quickly cross some areas/houses off my list, and mark others for special consideration. Figure it saved me a bit of time and effort.
(Yet I still find it sort of . . . creepy. Calling up the satellite view and being able to see people lounging beside their pools, etc. – even if they’re a bit fuzzy (as in focus, not shaving) – is a strange and frightening power.)
I’ve already noticed that TV news uses it to show locations of various calamities. But, I have to admit I’ve found it useful on a few occasions. For example, my daughter is a social worker in a big city that’s still fairly new to her. She’s not, uh, gifted with a sense of direction. She called me the other day and asked me if I was at my computer. Was having trouble finding a place she was driving to. I found it on Google Maps, switched to Street View. Spun around and saw the place was across the street from a CVS and that was the key to her finding this totally nondescript and poorly marked building.
One of my daughters moved to a new rental house and I was able to look at it on this service. Ditto my daughter in Indy who is trying to buy a house.
I’m frankly surprised Google went ahead with this project. How often will they update? That seems important.
Microsoft’s has a similar project, but it’s based on aircraft flyovers rather than street level. My house is on their Live Maps service from four different angles.
The city I currently live in takes no interest in local history. The library has practically nothing, and the one attempt to create a local transport and communications museum died aborning. Local developers make most of the town over every few decades, and little is spared. I have been trying to to get information from even just 50 years ago, and there is practically nothing.
However, back in the 1920s, someone did a complete aerial survey of the entire city, block by block. Its value as an historic record cannot be underestimated. I hope Google keeps records of this information somewhere. A hundred years from now it will be a priceless record.
our house is shown from either September or October of 2007. I can tell because the leaves have just started to turn on the trees, and there’s a political sign in our front yard for an issue on last year’s ballot.
The pictures of my neighborhood are at least 18 months old judging from existence of trees that have since been removed. It looks like it was taken on trash day.
Current, overhead only google maps hasn’t updated Aberdeen for years. My garden looks completely different and my office building and our massive head office aren’t built yet.
New Scientist had an article on this a few weeks back. Google were very conscious of showing peoples’ faces without their permission, and the original versions had blurred faces everywhere. This turned out to be too seriously creepy to be borne.
But someone worked out that there were a ton of permitted faces on the internet, and all they had to do was put a face - any face - on top of a head, and it wasn’t creepy any more, and there was no permission problem. Sorted!
If they used my face it would be entirely too creepy!
I don’t see where to enable this feature. Is there a special tag or something so you know which cities it’s available for? Do I have to specify a street address in order to turn it on?
They’re just photographs of places on the map you’re looking at. Bourne End, Buckinghamshire has some nice ones. There is even a Stereogram - familiar to all you APOD addicts - of St Lawrence’s Church, in High Wycombe! (West Wycombe, I think, really.)
