Tag: google

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.

google, short and sweet

Two google fanboy posts in one day! Still, they’re worth it 🙂

Google have just made their short URL generating service available through a public web interface. This is not that earth shattering, I’ve been using the service via the chrome extension and it’s worked well for some time now.

However, the excitement starts if you’re logged in to your google account, when it will present you a nice little history of your created URLs with click counts, and basic reporting, but the feature I love is the auto generated QR code!

you don’t even need to be logged in to access this information, they have created a neat URL based way of accessing it, so for this short URL:
http://goo.gl/DsH0
there is an information page:
http://goo.gl/info/DsH0
and a direct link to the QR code:
http://goo.gl/DsH0.qr

Not only that, but the API for the QR code generator appears to be open and usable by anyone who generates the request URL!

now THIS is a bike path!

… but what are all those cars doing on it?

According to Google Maps ‘blue outlined streets’ have Street View, so I was surprised to see that they must have left the car behind one day and hopped on a bicycle, because the Moonee Ponds Creek bicycle trail was outlined in blue just near my house. Alas, the Street View pics don’t give a true representation of the bike path – it seems wider and busier than I remember it.

The Moonee Ponds Creek Tollway

Uh-oh! algorithm troubles! That looks very much like the nearby tulla freeway. I’m sure we’re going to see a lot more interesting anomolies among the new Australian images.

where was their spirit of adventure?

One of the fascinating things about Google’s Street View coverage of Australia is the amazingly out of the way places they got to. I love this aspect – dirt roads that wind along in the back blocks of the never never.

Anyway, I was panning around the Gulf Country of far north Queensland when I noticed the blue line didn’t go all the way to Normanton. Odd – so I dropped the little yellow guy as close as I could to the end of the line and saw in the distance what looked like… yes, I think it is… water! Ha! that’s the Gulf Country for you.

Burke development road

No wonder they never got to Normanton 🙂

Street view invades Australia

I can’t wait for the conspiracy theorists to get going on this one – Google have released Street View on their maps in Australia. Unlike earlier releases, this is a massive and dense coverage… amazing detail.

The face blurring technology is in full swing, and not very discriminate – blurring both the wheels on my car, as well as heaps of other vaguely face like things.

Anyway, I’m pleased I wasn’t imagining things when I spotted the Google car last March.

google censorship, national security & pepsi

Like most google map watchers, I’ve heard the debates about censorship on Google Maps. Pressure from governments, back room deals, conspiracy theories… it all gets a good workout on the forums, lists and blogs. Until now, the common theme has always been national security… mostly defence installations.
Pepsi HeadquartersNow, it seems that money buys you anonymity. Or maybe Pepsi is really just a front for a chemical weapons factory… whatever, the reason, there is a neat square of blurred imagery (looks like photoshop’s ‘pallete knife’ is the filter of choice) in among photos of excellent quality, and that square obscures the headquarters of PepsiCo. Draw your own conclusions.