Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff looks dot com. Hello there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor here at how Stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting next to me looking at pictures of your house
Speaker 1: right now, as senior writer Jonathan Strickland, you need to
Speaker 1: mow your lawn and take down that old hammock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just know what that. Nobody's going to get in
Speaker 1: that thing again? Right? Yeah? Come on, who are your
Speaker 1: fooling so today? Before we get into the topic, I
Speaker 1: guess uh, we need to lead into it and I
Speaker 1: can think of no better way to lead into it.
Speaker 1: Then you can listener me. Seriously, you could have thought
Speaker 1: of fifty different ways lead. We have two listener mails
Speaker 1: that have to do with today's topic. The first comes
Speaker 1: from Duncan from Kent, England. You know what that means,
Speaker 1: hey eyes. I'm sure I speak for a lot of
Speaker 1: people when I say your podcasts awesome. I've been listening
Speaker 1: for a while now and accumula a few suggestions. It
Speaker 1: may be a lot to see. What's the deal with
Speaker 1: Google street View. I hope you guys have a great
Speaker 1: day and even great summer. From Duncan ps Max Rule.
Speaker 1: Duncan actually sent us quite a few suggestions. That was
Speaker 1: just one of them, but that's what we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about today. But we did have an email from someone
Speaker 1: else as well, Kimmy. Now Kimmy also gave multiple suggestions,
Speaker 1: but Kimmi says, hello, I really enjoyed the show and
Speaker 1: I was hoping to throw a couple of suggestions at
Speaker 1: you for ideas. I was wondering how Google gets their
Speaker 1: images for their street view on Google Maps Earth. It
Speaker 1: seems like an awful lot of pictures to get together,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering how they went about it. Thank
Speaker 1: you again for all the information or I'm sorry. Thank
Speaker 1: you for all the informative podcasts, and I hope there
Speaker 1: will be many more in the future. We hope so too, Kimmy.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk about Google street View. Thank you
Speaker 1: for all the informative podcasts and all those non informative podcasts.
Speaker 1: What we'd like to do those two. So Google street
Speaker 1: View is a is a well this this one will
Speaker 1: hopefully be one of the informative ones. So Google street
Speaker 1: View started back in two thousand seven, or at least
Speaker 1: it was unveiled in two thousand seven, that long ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what's strange is that when you think of
Speaker 1: all the news that's been generated by Google street View,
Speaker 1: it's amazing to think it's only been around for two
Speaker 1: years and it started in late May two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: so not you know, it's it's just gotten past the
Speaker 1: the two year mark. So basically they decided to strap
Speaker 1: the camera on the back of a car and drive
Speaker 1: it down the street. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So they put a camera that can take high definition photos.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of them and uh in three
Speaker 1: sixty right, So they're actually cameras facing in different directions,
Speaker 1: And what they do is they drive down the various
Speaker 1: streets with this camera running. It's constantly taking photos. Um
Speaker 1: and it GEO tags these photos. There's a GPS system
Speaker 1: on these these cars that allows Google to actually put
Speaker 1: the photos together in the right way, because I mean,
Speaker 1: if you just took pictures going down the street, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily know like, oh wait, you know what if
Speaker 1: they what if they're out of order. How can I
Speaker 1: does the Windy's come before the McDonald's, or you know
Speaker 1: which direction am I going in? So you need to
Speaker 1: have some information like the direction you're facing, the geotagging,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff in order to create a
Speaker 1: useful map. And it's really a big panoramic image for
Speaker 1: all the cities that are that have been involved in
Speaker 1: Google street View. And uh, I think there's been about
Speaker 1: a hundred of them so far worldwide. And they started
Speaker 1: in the United States, actually started in California, which should
Speaker 1: come as no surprises since that's where the headquarters for
Speaker 1: Google happen to be and the Google Plex. Yes, and uh,
Speaker 1: I believe San Jose was the very first UM city
Speaker 1: to to encounter the Google street View vehicles. UM and yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean there's nothing really special, uh in the
Speaker 1: in their methodology. They just, like we said, drive down
Speaker 1: the street and they take lots of photos. UM. These
Speaker 1: photos they then meshed together to create these panoramic images
Speaker 1: that are known as Google street View. Now, even at
Speaker 1: the very beginning, there were some issues with this UM
Speaker 1: in June two thousand seven, so it had been active
Speaker 1: for just a couple of weeks, and said that within
Speaker 1: hours of the photographs of downtown San Francisco and New
Speaker 1: York hitting the internet, bloggers were posting images of people
Speaker 1: their faces visible, being arrested, sunbathing, and urinating in public.
Speaker 1: Hopefully not all at the same time. That would be
Speaker 1: a really awkward criminal sunbathing and urinating while being arrested. Um,
Speaker 1: I imagine those are three different categories of people. Wait
Speaker 1: you you can cut me, but make sure you you know,
Speaker 1: I need to flip over here, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna go with horrible, horrible jokes. If I keep on,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna yeah. Yeah, So you know, wire dot Com
Speaker 1: went ahead and started collecting these and started showing them off,
Speaker 1: and uh, they're actually quite a few sites on the
Speaker 1: web now are people collect and show funny images that
Speaker 1: were they're captured by Google street View. But even at
Speaker 1: that early stage, back in two thousand and seven, there
Speaker 1: were obviously some issues with the Google street Views raised
Speaker 1: some questions like privacy and um, you know, do you
Speaker 1: have any expectation of privacy when you're out in public?
Speaker 1: Should you? Should you? Does Google have a responsibility to
Speaker 1: to mask people's profiles so that they aren't easily identifiable
Speaker 1: when they're out in public. I mean, after all, if
Speaker 1: I were walking down the street, there's nothing stopping me
Speaker 1: from taking photos of any public place or or location,
Speaker 1: I could just you know, whip out the camera and
Speaker 1: start taking photos left and right. You have that right
Speaker 1: in the United States and in most other countries where
Speaker 1: Google street View is. And in fact, that's been Google's
Speaker 1: defense in a lot of these cases, saying it's there's
Speaker 1: nothing illegal about what we're doing. We we keep to
Speaker 1: public roadways, and therefore we can take all the photos
Speaker 1: we want roadways for now, except they're starting to deviate
Speaker 1: from the roadways. And well, not only that, but they're
Speaker 1: also instances where they have driven on roads where there
Speaker 1: were no trespassing signs and private property signs up. Uh.
Speaker 1: And yet Google street View cars have gone through these
Speaker 1: communities and taking taking photos. Um. And there's at least
Speaker 1: one instance where that really was uh an issue. Um.
Speaker 1: It was in Minnesota. There was a town there, a
Speaker 1: gated community, and it was private. It was a private
Speaker 1: gated community that the citizens of that community actually owned
Speaker 1: the streets, so they were private roads, they weren't public.
Speaker 1: And yet Google street you drove through this community, took
Speaker 1: photos uploaded them. They were part of Google street View.
Speaker 1: Eventually they did take down those photos. Um because redents
Speaker 1: of north Oaks said, we don't want our pictures there,
Speaker 1: we don't want our community up on the internet. And
Speaker 1: eventually Google did take them down. And in fact, there
Speaker 1: is a process you can go through. If you find
Speaker 1: a photo to be objection bowl for some reason or another,
Speaker 1: you can you can click on a little link and
Speaker 1: report it to Google and assuming that you have a
Speaker 1: legitimate reason for bringing down that photo, Google will actually
Speaker 1: take it down and will eventually replace it with something else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, there have been some high profile names
Speaker 1: who have written in to say please take my house down.
Speaker 1: Among them, Sir Paul McCartney of his London house asked
Speaker 1: Google to remove his pictures of his home. I think
Speaker 1: he specifically said let it be okay and uh So, anyway,
Speaker 1: when I meant a few minutes ago to about we
Speaker 1: were talking about how they were deviating from the path
Speaker 1: Google street view and now employs tricycles. Not tricycles like
Speaker 1: you know, the kind with the little bell and the streamers.
Speaker 1: I just I just envisioned all these like little hellions
Speaker 1: on big wheels really cool, be awesome. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: the photos to come back? No, I can't actually anyway,
Speaker 1: but no, they're they're more like those uh those ice
Speaker 1: cream carts because they have a big box on the
Speaker 1: back between the two back wheels. And uh, you know
Speaker 1: the the Google street View camera, which is basically a
Speaker 1: giant pole with the panoramic cameras mounted on the top.
Speaker 1: They have to be a certain height to really get
Speaker 1: the you know the Google street View effects, which actually
Speaker 1: which is not like the ken Burns effect. That's an
Speaker 1: entirely different animal, but that actually did cause some issues
Speaker 1: in other countries. That's that height ca so people jump ahead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the street view the street view trikes are traveling on
Speaker 1: paths like in parks and college campuses, places where the
Speaker 1: cars may not travel. Um, so I'm sure that that
Speaker 1: will cause a fresh round of complaints. That's that's kind
Speaker 1: of still a fairly new thing as at the time
Speaker 1: we're recording this, uh in January, So um wow, going back,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not like we ever get accused of
Speaker 1: spreading misinformation anything anyway. Yes, and it's going and we
Speaker 1: could have been back to the future anyway, No, it is.
Speaker 1: It is June, and the tricycles are still sort of
Speaker 1: a new thing. Yeah, they are a new thing. And
Speaker 1: um and I'm sure that we're going to see some
Speaker 1: interesting and creative ways that students are going to find,
Speaker 1: uh to insert themselves into these photos, because that has
Speaker 1: already become something of a a thing, a meme if
Speaker 1: you will, on the internet, is finding ways of inserting
Speaker 1: interesting pictures into Google street View. Now, it's a little
Speaker 1: tricky because usually Google does not announce when it's going
Speaker 1: to go through a certain community, so you know, you
Speaker 1: kind of have to be at the ready all the
Speaker 1: time if you really want to do something. And once
Speaker 1: in a while they'll work with someone and and plan
Speaker 1: ahead so they can do something particularly special. But there
Speaker 1: have been plenty of spontaneous uh displays, let's say, of
Speaker 1: people trying to to sneak in something into Google street View. Um.
Speaker 1: I saw an image not that long ago of a
Speaker 1: young lady, I would say, of the college age, who
Speaker 1: was obviously in the process of displaying her chest to
Speaker 1: the Google street View car, perhaps going through the streets
Speaker 1: of New Orleans doing during It looked to me like
Speaker 1: it was going past the college campus. Tell you the truth,
Speaker 1: but the the young lady was not quick enough on
Speaker 1: the draw, so to speak. So there were there were
Speaker 1: no um, well, there's no way to say it. There
Speaker 1: were no boobies. There were no boobies in the photo.
Speaker 1: There was it was clearly pre booby revelation. So um.
Speaker 1: But you know what, ladies, keep on trying because I'm
Speaker 1: sure one of you will eventually succeed. And I know
Speaker 1: that that kind of fame is sort of thing that
Speaker 1: I'll make you proud for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: Stay classy tech stuff. All I'm saying I wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not gonna judge you if you do
Speaker 1: do it. But he there as gotta be better ways
Speaker 1: to spend your time, like and there's There have been
Speaker 1: some really cool displays, not like these goofy little like
Speaker 1: flash Um Girls Gone Google street View. The one of
Speaker 1: the cool ones was an art project in Pittsburgh, the
Speaker 1: Street with a View project. Are you familiar with this one?
Speaker 1: This one? I don't know. You've probably seen some of
Speaker 1: the images and just didn't know it was part of
Speaker 1: this this um this project. So this was a project
Speaker 1: that uh that Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley came up
Speaker 1: with back in two thousand and eight, and they knew
Speaker 1: that Google was coming through this neighborhood in Pittsburgh, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to create a series of tableau for the
Speaker 1: street View car to capture as it drove down this
Speaker 1: very narrow street. And so they created several different scenes,
Speaker 1: not just you know one. So the street View ended
Speaker 1: up passing a high school marching band in the middle
Speaker 1: of a performance, UM, a parade, a marathon UM. There
Speaker 1: was someone clear moving in or moving out of a
Speaker 1: home because there was a big moving car with a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff piled up. There was a garage band practicing.
Speaker 1: There was a mad scientist lab in a garage where
Speaker 1: they were working on a love laser of some sort
Speaker 1: um there, and there were reports that there were even
Speaker 1: citizens of the neighborhood getting involved. Like they they saw
Speaker 1: that something was going on, so they decided to put
Speaker 1: on their own little little displays as well, which kind
Speaker 1: of blurred the line between fantasy and reality, which was
Speaker 1: really what this project was all about. Oh and the
Speaker 1: image that that really got a lot of circulation in
Speaker 1: the blogs. There was a couple of people out on
Speaker 1: the lawn practicing with buffer weapons that you would see
Speaker 1: in a LARP, you know, live action role playing buffer weapons.
Speaker 1: So these two guys with these big these big shields
Speaker 1: and padded swords just wailing the crap out of each other.
Speaker 1: And um, yeah, all of that was part of this project.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty cool. You can go to the street
Speaker 1: with a view projects still up online and see the
Speaker 1: images that came from it. You can you can drive essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, you virtually drive down the street and see
Speaker 1: all these different tableau And uh, I believe you were
Speaker 1: you the one who showed me that street view had
Speaker 1: found a very hard to find person. Oh yeah I did.
Speaker 1: Um Actually, yeah, who to thunk it? Street View found
Speaker 1: Waldo there. He was just there on the sidewalks. Shirt
Speaker 1: Caane had the whole thing, the glasses. Waldo was right there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wish I had written down exactly what what town
Speaker 1: that was in. I can't remember off the top of
Speaker 1: my head. I did email that out um earlier. Funny.
Speaker 1: It was funny, and it's it's found some not so
Speaker 1: fun stuff too. Um. As the recording of this podcast,
Speaker 1: there was a recent report that Google street View helped
Speaker 1: capture a couple of ne'er dwells. Yes, some some yes,
Speaker 1: some some kids who mugged a teenage Actually I don't
Speaker 1: know that they were kids, but they were twins, twins
Speaker 1: who mugged the teenager and stole his money and uh
Speaker 1: bicycle and yeah, and his mobile phone and um. The photo,
Speaker 1: the street view photo photo was taken just before the crime.
Speaker 1: And what happened was the kid the victim saw the
Speaker 1: street view pictures, saw the twins. Those are the guys
Speaker 1: who jumped me. They were able to track them down
Speaker 1: and that one of the twins did admit to the crime.
Speaker 1: And there you go. Actually, uh, he had to go
Speaker 1: to a little effort though, because Google street View blurs
Speaker 1: the faces of most of the people in the images. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This this came as it didn't always do that. This
Speaker 1: came as a result of many people complaining that, you know,
Speaker 1: your privacy is not being protected while the Google street
Speaker 1: View cars driving on the streets. So let's say you're
Speaker 1: walking out of someplace that you'd rather people not know
Speaker 1: you're walking out of, like says I was thinking of
Speaker 1: things like an adult bookstore or perhaps your mistress's home.
Speaker 1: You would not necessarily want everyone to be able to
Speaker 1: see that, not your mistress Plott. I'm not suggesting that
Speaker 1: you have a miss stress. I'm just yours and the
Speaker 1: the universal you universe's mistress just laughing in our juxtaposition
Speaker 1: of places we wouldn't want to be seen walking out of.
Speaker 1: Oh well yeah, beef jerky versus adult bookstore mistress is
Speaker 1: home right, all right? Well, I'm being realistic and you're
Speaker 1: being silly. So but people wrote in and said they
Speaker 1: really didn't like the thought of And there are other
Speaker 1: more innocent things that you might not want people seeing.
Speaker 1: They want you wouldn't want to see people to see
Speaker 1: you walking out of, say a you know, a doctor's office, necessarily,
Speaker 1: because then people are gonna say, hey, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1: Are you all right? If you know, it's none of
Speaker 1: their business, you don't want them to know that necessarily.
Speaker 1: So Google did take these these words to heart, and
Speaker 1: they created an algorithm that detects faces and then blurs them.
Speaker 1: It's not flawless. And license plates to plates as well, Yes,
Speaker 1: also blurs those out most of the time. Yes, And
Speaker 1: also people who aren't actually people, but you know images
Speaker 1: that look like faces, right right, So you may see
Speaker 1: a mural on a wall that's all blurred out because
Speaker 1: Google that they all grow them is detected as a face. Um.
Speaker 1: And also every now and then you'll see something really
Speaker 1: really strange, Like you'll see someone walking down the street
Speaker 1: and they don't appear to have a head. That's because
Speaker 1: the cameras. It's it's where two different pictures, two different
Speaker 1: images have been joined together, and of course the subject
Speaker 1: is moving, as is the car, so that you're the
Speaker 1: subject is not in the exact same place he or
Speaker 1: she was when the first photo was taken. And so
Speaker 1: when the two photos are joined together, you might get
Speaker 1: something odd. So whenever there's a joint, you're gonna possibly
Speaker 1: see some weird stuff if something was moving within the frame,
Speaker 1: the same thing that you get when you look at
Speaker 1: the Gigapan photos, the Giant Panorama photos. Yeah. Now it's
Speaker 1: it's fun to look at the pictures of uh, you
Speaker 1: know what's going on up and down the street as
Speaker 1: you you know, as the car was traveling. Um. I
Speaker 1: particularly this sort of ties all these things together. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of my favorites is a series from Europe where
Speaker 1: the street you car was going under a particularly low
Speaker 1: bridge and of course that pole has mounted up pretty high,
Speaker 1: so you have all these pictures of you know, the
Speaker 1: bridge coming up and then all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: have pictures of the bumper of the car because it
Speaker 1: knocked the pole right off the top of the car,
Speaker 1: and maybe just the sky. Oh yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: Now we can go to Mars Lens cat through Google
Speaker 1: street View. Uh. But you know there's a lot of
Speaker 1: sites actually that have all kinds of uh images that
Speaker 1: are weird, things intentionally shot or things they were just
Speaker 1: you know, accidents like that, and uh, you know Europe actually,
Speaker 1: Europe is a place that's sort of difficult for Google
Speaker 1: street View because there are a lot of privacy advocates
Speaker 1: that are anti street view, especially in Germany, and there
Speaker 1: there's some there's some good reasons behind that. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's a couple of villages in England that object
Speaker 1: to Google street View because they say that it would
Speaker 1: allow criminals to case their houses from the comfort of
Speaker 1: their own home. They wouldn't have to you know, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be you know, you wouldn't you would never notice
Speaker 1: like that strange person who is lurking in a car
Speaker 1: and has been sitting there for like five or six
Speaker 1: minutes and you're wondering Okay, as this person checking out
Speaker 1: my home to see if there's a way to break in,
Speaker 1: you would never see that person because they could just
Speaker 1: sit at home and look at that same image from
Speaker 1: their computer and assuming they could find a way in
Speaker 1: from the front, you know, or maybe the back if
Speaker 1: if you have a road going right behind, or you know,
Speaker 1: if you're on the corner lot or something. Um, then
Speaker 1: there's a legitimate argument there saying, you know, you have
Speaker 1: provided uh, these these people a chance to really look
Speaker 1: at my house and possibly find a way in. Uh.
Speaker 1: And some of the villages that that really objected to
Speaker 1: Google street View. In fact, one of them, a a
Speaker 1: group of sitisens formed a human chain and surrounded the
Speaker 1: Google street View car would not allow it to go
Speaker 1: into the village. Um. You know, they they point out
Speaker 1: and says we've had a string of robberies and we
Speaker 1: don't want it to get worse. Now, you could argue
Speaker 1: that anyone at all could walk down the public street
Speaker 1: and take photos and achieved the same thing. But then,
Speaker 1: of course you've got the chance that since we'll see
Speaker 1: that person just say hey, what what you doing exactly? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they also wouldn't know when you were coming or going,
Speaker 1: and you know, so lazy criminals really anyway, Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: and you were renting the height of the camera in Japan, uh,
Speaker 1: they were asked to Google was asked to lower the
Speaker 1: cameras because there are fences and the cameras would shoot
Speaker 1: right over the fence and into people's yards, and they
Speaker 1: didn't want The common complaint I heard was that now
Speaker 1: people can see that, you know, my laundry as it's
Speaker 1: hanging up. I'm thinking, well, they see it all the
Speaker 1: time when it's on you. But I don't know, Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe I'm just too practical that way. They probably didn't
Speaker 1: want to get caught sunbathing, or getting arrested or urinating,
Speaker 1: right right, all three of the same time. You know what,
Speaker 1: I am not gonna lay out the challenge for text
Speaker 1: stuff listeners, try and go out there and get Google
Speaker 1: street you to take an image of them being arrested, sunbathing,
Speaker 1: and urinating at the same time. But all you stuff
Speaker 1: you shoulder, here's a direct challenge. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding that I don't I don't want any
Speaker 1: phone calls saying, hey, this guy needs you to bail
Speaker 1: him out because you're the one who convinced him to
Speaker 1: get arrested. Yeah, yeah, well, um yeah, And in a
Speaker 1: lot of these cases too, especially in countries where uh
Speaker 1: whole governments have gotten involved in telling Google to stop
Speaker 1: taking pictures or at least start trying harder to protect privacy. Um,
Speaker 1: Google is is keeping images the originals pre blur um
Speaker 1: for a less time. They're basically keeping them long enough
Speaker 1: to blur them and then getting rid of the originals. Um.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, basically, they're they're trying to be
Speaker 1: more diligent about blurring out identifiable personal information such as
Speaker 1: faces and the license plate numbers of cars and and
Speaker 1: things like that, trying to make themselves, I guess, a
Speaker 1: little bit more friendly to organizations and company, right, people
Speaker 1: who might object to them and complain to the government.
Speaker 1: And you may wonder why does Google even do this
Speaker 1: at all. Well, it's because their their mission is to
Speaker 1: organize the world's information. And you might think, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: But you might think, hey, I thought that just applied
Speaker 1: to the Internet. Well, Google does not seem to think so.
Speaker 1: Google thinks of the world's information as the world's information.
Speaker 1: So really the Internet was just how they got started
Speaker 1: that's kind of crazy, don't you think it's It's cool
Speaker 1: in a way. But yeah, so I can see why
Speaker 1: people would object. I mean, think about it this way.
Speaker 1: If you, let's say the Google street View happens to
Speaker 1: be going down your street the same week that you,
Speaker 1: you know, you've just put off mowing the lawn for
Speaker 1: one more week because you just it's it's super hot.
Speaker 1: You you wanted to see if the heat right wave
Speaker 1: will break, but right now your lawn looks really crappy.
Speaker 1: Then later on, you decided to put your house up
Speaker 1: for sale, and you put up an ad, and someone
Speaker 1: decides to check out Google street View to see what
Speaker 1: that house looks like. And they happen to see your
Speaker 1: house back when you didn't mow that lawn, and it's
Speaker 1: all shaggy and nasty, and everyone's thinking, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: just keep looking for another house. And they're not really
Speaker 1: seeing your house the way it actually is. They're just
Speaker 1: seeing it at one moment in time. But that moment
Speaker 1: could represent, you know, their their moment of deciding whether
Speaker 1: or not they want to even pursue buying your house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard that argument made, So there you go. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna give you my address, so you can't. There's
Speaker 1: no way you're gonna I'm not going to share that.
Speaker 1: I don't want people looking at my house on Google
Speaker 1: street you. If you're curious to see if they've been
Speaker 1: down your street, you can tell on Google Maps there's
Speaker 1: a blue line um that that shows you the streets
Speaker 1: that they have actually gone and taking pictures down. And
Speaker 1: I've actually found Google street you to be incredibly useful,
Speaker 1: especially on my my phone, my smartphone, because um, I
Speaker 1: I tend to travel by foot quite a quite a bit,
Speaker 1: and uh, when I go to a different city, I'll
Speaker 1: often pull on the Google street you to make sure
Speaker 1: that I am facing the right direction because of ocasionally,
Speaker 1: you know, if I'm in a new city, I don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have my bearings. I don't necessarily know which way
Speaker 1: is north, although my phone does have a compass um
Speaker 1: so I might not know the right direction to walk
Speaker 1: in to get to wherever I'm going. You know, I
Speaker 1: might take a train somewhere, but then I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: well where do I go from here? Is just go
Speaker 1: north on the street, but I don't know which way
Speaker 1: north is. Google street is very useful because you can
Speaker 1: actually follow the route and see the landmarks that are there,
Speaker 1: and it makes getting around a lot easier, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're one of those people who uses
Speaker 1: visual landmarks like I do. Yeah, that's that's Uh. People
Speaker 1: seem to object to it less when they're they're mapping
Speaker 1: uh you know, downtowns and and places where they're not
Speaker 1: residential locations corporate locations, um, you know, because they it
Speaker 1: is useful to find your way around, um. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of useful for archival purposes too. I've seen before
Speaker 1: and after pictures represented in a couple of ocations of
Speaker 1: places that have closed obviously recently. Um, so that that's
Speaker 1: kind of neat to to, you know, sort of get
Speaker 1: that nostalgic. Oh yeah, I remember when the street used
Speaker 1: to look like that. But yeah, yeah, when it comes
Speaker 1: to residential streets, it's a much more contentious issue. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to the time where they start doing
Speaker 1: Google street View for historic era they just reconstruct the town. Well,
Speaker 1: you know they've done that with Google Earth, where they've
Speaker 1: built they've built these three D models of ancient cities
Speaker 1: and put them on Google Earth, so you can actually
Speaker 1: view like ancient Rome on Google Earth and see what
Speaker 1: the streets are are We're like back then. Now, granted
Speaker 1: you're looking at computer models, you're not looking at photos.
Speaker 1: Obviously no one was around back then to take photos.
Speaker 1: Turns out, um, they they didn't have the technology. They're
Speaker 1: actually people around, they just didn't have any cameras, right.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Kimmy Kimmy was also asking about, um, how
Speaker 1: how Google Earth gets all of its photos because Google
Speaker 1: street View they get their photos from these cars driving around.
Speaker 1: But well they launched the cars into space. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's not how it works. Um, what what Google Earth
Speaker 1: does but a camera on the Space shuttle on the
Speaker 1: top and fly it around. No. What Google Earth does
Speaker 1: is they get a very small hedgehog and a very
Speaker 1: large rubber band. No, no, that's not what happens. What
Speaker 1: Google Earth does is they purchase satellite imagery from a
Speaker 1: couple of different companies. These are companies that obviously have
Speaker 1: satellites out in orbit around the Earth, and they are
Speaker 1: taking high resolution photos satellite images of the Earth, and
Speaker 1: Google just purchases them and then put them together and
Speaker 1: um updates them every so often. So if you look
Speaker 1: at Google Earth and you look up at a specific
Speaker 1: location something. Let's let's say that there's been a building
Speaker 1: that's that's just been built within the last year. If
Speaker 1: you look at the image on Google Earth, you may see,
Speaker 1: you know, either a different thing where that building is,
Speaker 1: or perhaps just an empty lot um. You won't necessarily
Speaker 1: see the most current photo because these you know, satellites,
Speaker 1: they only take images every so often over a certain area.
Speaker 1: So the images tend to lag behind by a couple
Speaker 1: of years on Google Earth. But that's all they get them.
Speaker 1: They get them from these satellite companies. Well, that was
Speaker 1: a lot less dramatic than I was hoping for. So
Speaker 1: the hedgehog is screaming through the stratosphere taking photos furiously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should see re entry. Talk about screaming. I only
Speaker 1: say there's a flash based game where you launch a
Speaker 1: hedgehog to Mars, which is why that I thought immediately
Speaker 1: occurred to me. It's awesome. Okay, that's very cute little hedgehog.
Speaker 1: He enjoys it. Yeah, he's waving the whole So well,
Speaker 1: I guess that pretty much wrapped up Google Street, you
Speaker 1: don't you think, Thank god? Alright, So, um, if you
Speaker 1: guys have any other questions, if you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for episodes or comments, criticisms, that sort of thing. You
Speaker 1: can write us. Our email address is tech stuff at
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Speaker 1: we're probably not the best people to come type, because one,
Speaker 1: we're really busy doing all kinds of other things like
Speaker 1: writing and editing. Um, and to tech support questions are
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Speaker 1: through the process, whether you're figuring out why your computer
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Speaker 1: data went after you spilled the container of grape juice
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Speaker 1: a hurry. Uh. Not that we don't love hearing from you,
Speaker 1: but those are the kinds of questions that are much
Speaker 1: harder for us to ask because you know, we can't
Speaker 1: find that in some technical articles, and we're not we're
Speaker 1: not necessarily experts on every technical system that has ever
Speaker 1: come out. Oh fine, go ahead and tell them no,
Speaker 1: I kind of just go ahead and get that all
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