Thursday, June 07, 2007

google maps' "streets view"

Joe and I sampled Google's "streets view" maps feature last week, and after a few minutes came up with all kinds "Y'know what's gonna happen"s... One big one of course, was the inadvertant capture of everyday people engaged in, umm... compromising behavior. You could capture anything by chance, y'know? From nose picks to arguments to clandestine rendezvouses to muggings. WIRED magazine started taking submissions of some such finds, probably on the day of street view's release. There's probably hundreds of sites or blogs collecting similar material by now.

I stumbled across a link to one that I saw featured on THE DAILY SHOW. Too funny. =)

* June 10, 2007. Wow! "This image is no longer available." It was of a man taking a whiz on a speed limit sign along the highway. Here's the link to the WIRED collection of interesting street views. Not all that scandalous a selection.

* June 11, 2007. Found a post at The Consumerist that includes the sign-whizzing image... The post refers to an interview at Freakonomics with Google's Streets View product manager.

A little disappointing that Boston hasn't been assimilated yet. Seems like it's just San Fran and Manhattan so far.

* June 9, 2007. Besides Boston, NY and SF were the only locations that I tried. Today I see that they've got Vegas, Denver, and Miami street viewed as well.

I hazily recall a laserdisc project from the 80s being dubbed the first, or an early, example of interactive multimedia. It was a photographic survey of all the streets in the downtown of a city. Laserdisc tech allowed a viewer to jump to any location at will, or play back the sequence of snaps that connected one location to another. I was hoping for that option thru street view, but alas, not (yet) happening.

* June 12, 2007. Wack! Found an entry at Wikipedia for the (sorry, it's called) HYPERmedia project with the laserdisc of city street photography. The city was Aspen. Thank you, interweb!

It's a little sad how this one turn of a phrase from the article makes me feel so... well, old, I guess: "... transferred to laserdisc, the analog-video precursor to DVD technology..." The writer felt that an appellative was necessary to explain the term "laserdisc" to readers! *sigh*


Keep on peekin on~

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