Google, the street view trike came, and went

Update: 18 months now, still prodding google, but no answers yet 🙁

Google Street View is brilliant – in fact, the whole digital map revolution is largely driven by expectations set by Google. Their tech is amazing. Unfortunately, as an organisation, they often fail to come up to scratch. A shame… here’s an example:

Every now and then Google have a flurry of promotion about their street view partners program, most recently in March this year the blogs seemed to be getting the message out. It’s certainly a cool idea, and there are some stunning examples out there. Our University applied for this years ago, and after a few slips and trips, were delighted when the trike finally visited the campus (on May 9, 2010). Then we settled down to wait for the images to come online. The site said it could take up to 90 days.

The Google Street View trike visits the University of Melbourne

Today is the anniversary. Yup, 365 days later, and still no Street View on campus. Now, I’m sure they have their reasons – obviously, being very busy would be one of them. They have since released some excellent street view partner sites. I know we’re not being singled out or ignored, because I understand that the day before they came to us, they did the MCG… and it’s not online yet either! I guess what I find infuriating is [a.] that they are still soliciting for partners, when they’ve obviously got a massive backlog of images already, and [b.] that they never tell you anything – no communication, no progress updates, nothing. It’s always “don’t call us, we’ll call you”.

So, Google is as Google does. It’s free, so one certainly can’t complain, but like a lot of people, I do wonder about the direction Google are taking. That they were so long congratulated as innovators, but now that innovation is contributing to a lack of focus for a business that was built on focus. I wonder how long before they do start to officially start to trim their programs, rather than just let them die of neglect.

And now they’re even going indoors! Don’t know if we’ll ever see our images online at this rate.

Yet more trumpeting about excellent new StreetView locations, but no response to any of my enquiries.

Nuclear : why there should be no debate

Like the rest of the world, I’ve watched, appalled as the people of Japan dealt with the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear. Only slightly less appalling is the way the nuclear lobby have pointed to Fukushima as an example of why nuclear energy is safe and good.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on nuclear energy – not an expert on any of it really – but I do my best to argue a point in a balanced and logical way, something the lobbyists are naturally struggling with.

Is nuclear safe?

This has been an interesting argument. The lobbyists have rightly pointed out that many people died as a result of the collapse of a hydro electric dam during the Japanese earthquake, but so far none have died as a result of the nuclear difficulties. The facts are plain enough, but to drag these facts alongside each other and deduce that therefore nuclear is safer is a complete nonsense, and it’s all about playing with peoples’ perception of risk.

How much do they think was spent on safety measures around the hydro dam? What about, as a percentage of the budget of the facility, or perhaps per Megawatt of energy produced? I don’t know, but I’m having a little guess that keeping a nuclear facility ‘safe’ costs a lot of money. I also reckon that if an equivalent proportion of money was spent keeping the people safe from the hydro dam, then there would have been no deaths.

We don’t perceive a dam as terribly dangerous, so naturally less money gets spent, less safeguards are put in place, and when things go horribly wrong, more people are put at risk. It’s completely shameful that the nuclear apologists are using this inappropriate comparison to promote their point of view.

Why am I frightened by nuclear?

People are frightened by all sorts of things, sometimes those fears are irrational. One of the main reasons we are so scared of nuclear is because we can’t easily see it. Running away is a fundamental survival instinct, we feel safer if we think we can get away from danger, but where do you run when you don’t know what you’re running from?

This is a big issue. On the news tonight, I heard a Japanese man saying that he though he would be able to go back to his home soon, because he couldn’t see any problem, but authorities are telling him he might never be able to safely return. How confusing that must be.

So, if we can’t see the problem, we rely on people to tell us when it’s safe. Unfortunately, past experience with this sort of disaster control has left us deeply suspicious of authorities. Do we really believe them when they say it’s safe? No. One of the most frightening stories I’ve ever heard about nuclear disaster is a story by childrens’ author, Raymond Briggs, When the Wind Blows. It’s a simply told, terrifyingly believable story that is guaranteed to give you nightmares and remind of the risks of trust.

Lets go back to the hydro dam. A terrible toll of life, to be sure, but the water passed. People will return to pick up their lives, houses will be rebuilt, hopefully lessons will be learned. What will happen around the ‘safe’ Fukushima nuclear plant? Will people return next month? Will life go on as normal? Will the wounds heal? Not bloody likely! It won’t be safe to live there, drink the water, eat the food, catch the fish for many many years to come.

How can these fools ignore such a glaring aspect of the argument?

Is nuclear smart?

To me, this is a bit like the argument against fossil fuels. Take everything else out of the equation. Forget about relative cost, safety, efficiency… just listen to this. You dig something up, a finite resource, it costs a heap to dig up, you turn it into something really dangerous, suck the life out of it, and then have it hang around being dangerous for a very very long time. Does that sound smart? Does that sound like something you want to keep doing? Doesn’t it make you, just for a moment, think it might be worth exploring the other options?

I thought so 😉

Duh! you already pay a carbon tax!!

To the dummies who don’t want a carbon tax… Do you realise that we, the Australian taxpayer, currently PAY the fossil fuel industry $9 billion dollars a year? They are a drain on your pocket to the tune of around $450 per person, per year.

Of course they don’t want you to stop! We are paying them to pollute! It’s insanity, but that’s where bowing to industry based lobby groups will get you!

Personally, I’d be quite happy to dump the idea of a carbon tax if the government would just stop paying these insane subsidies as recommended as far back as 2003 by Christopher Riedy, when he said in his working paper:

Removal of these perverse subsidies can provide a ‘double dividend’ of greenhouse abatement and improved economic performance.

You know it makes sense!

no google, I don’t like that!

In the wake of my previous post, I was checking out some of the photos on Google maps of Sydney Road, one of my photos came up first, which was nice, but then I started navigating around the nearby photos… they were all crappy photos of a shoe store!

I probably missed this addition, but I’d always thought that photos only came from two sources – Panoramio or geotagged Flickr, which meant that there was a reasonably high quality – a natural filter if you like. Now it seems that a business owner or anyone else who adds photos to a Google Place page, gets them added to the maps interface.

Frankly, that’s crap! At least allow the user to filter them out. I often use this feature to explore an area of interest, I don’t want some retailer’s happy snaps of their shop diluting the experience!

StreetView updates… eventually!

Couple of new things on Google Maps / Street View.

They’ve added some new imagery captured by the trike, Google Earth Blog has a good write up of the additions.

While I was there, I was alerted by user “Munden” that the blue dots of user generated photos had disappeared from the Google Maps when you dragged Pegman. Indeed! That does make it a lot easier to drop pegman on a ‘real’ bit of streetview. You can still access the photos by turning on the photo layer first, then dragging pegman onto a photo. Works OK, but I found it didn’t work in the little inset map that displays in the lower right corner. Maybe that’s on their list!

Google's Street View Trike

Speaking of “on their list”, at the start of May last year, the Google Street View trike visited my uni’s campus, but still no sign of the images online. The LatLong blog seemed to be using the recent additions to trumpet their partner program, but I have to say, if our experience is any guide people will have a looong wait for any results!

all that water

When it comes to big events like the recent floods in Queensland and Victoria, it’s information overload. The news organisation love it, broadcasting incessantly and devoting great slabs of print to it. I don’t want to add to that, so this post is just a scrapbook of, for me, the most striking images. These are all aerial photographs from Nearmap, if you click, you’ll go to the ‘wet’ image on nearmap. Incredible stuff.

1. Disappearing house

a house vanishes underwater

2. Having a cow of a day

there's a cow on my roof

3. There’s a caravan in our tree

caravan in the tree

4. Rearranging the riverside

riverside mayhem

5. Backyard salvage by canoe

back yard salvage by canoe

6. Where did you park the digger?

submerged digger

…and that’s not all

More amazing sights are being found every day by nearmap forum members.
loungeing around two men in a (spa) tubSS bathtub

Big retail never got it

Gerry Harvey (and @harveynormanau ) has become the visible target of the online shopper recently with his comments regarding GST and a ‘level playing field’. Technically, he’s correct, but his approach and methods work best for a certain demographic on shallow, sensationalist popular television – in the faster moving, better informed blogosphere, he’s experienced a massive ‘suicidal‘ .

I’m not going to add much to the comment that hasn’t already been said better already by others [1, 2, 3]. However, I will try to add a little insight from my own perspective.

About 18 years ago, I worked for a company that prepared film separations for print (crumbs! only 18 years ago – do film houses still exist?). It was highly skilled and exacting work, and the company, Show-Ads, was the acknowledged leader of the industry in Australia. Some of the work we produced was simply superb.

Anyway, we could see the internet was going to have a huge impact. We also had really close ties with the major ad agencies and direct links to the several major retailers (Target, Myer, Coles, Kmart). We produced all the artwork for the catalogues these retailers stuffed in your mailbox, and we held digital image files of all their product (we photographed much of it ourselves). In short, we were really well placed to give these retailers a huge head start into online sales.

So, in 1995, the company spawned a new division called Marketspace. It was going to be soooo cool – it was a virtual shopping mall where a visitor could enter, choose a retailer, browse products, and … well, they could browse products. To be fair, looking back now, it sounds like crap, and it kinda was (frames, animated gifs etc.), but 15 years ago, believe me, it was the shizzle!

MarketSpace logo

Funny thing though, the retailers were dead scared of it. They didn’t want to get involved, they didn’t want the risk, the didn’t think it would work, they didn’t want it to work because that would mean people wouldn’t visit their stores. It was an attitude that, even then, marked them as dinosaurs, trudging reluctantly down the long road to the tarpits of extinction. And here we are today, more then 15 years later, and we’re still hearing the same arguments!

So, Gerry (and your ilk). It’s too late. Not just a few weeks too late, not just a few years, but 15 bloody years too late!

Amusingly, one of the brands I remember from the Marketspace days was Myer’s failed venture into electronics: MegaMart (remember those?), and 15 of those stores were sold off to Harvey Norman! So, Gerry, you really did have your chance 15 years ago! Hilarious that now you can go to harveynorman.com.au and search/browse product, but not buy! Sure, there’s no animated gifs, but it’s still that 1995 mindset.