Insert Clever Title Here

“Losing his best friend in a freak boating accident was bad enough.
But Google’s Street View has made a bad situation worse for Bill, from Victoria.”

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/08/11/1218306724273.html

Yes, but having the story as the front page on The Age (FAIRFAX) is not just as bad, it is worse.

Google pulled the image, I suspect that they are monitoring Streetview and repeated spikes of traffic to places may get their interest tweaked.  The geo-ref for this was doing the rounds on Friday, by that night the image had been pulled.  And it would have stayed gone, occasionally doing the rounds of email in boxes I am sure, but now main stream media pulls up the screenshot, puts it on the home page for a major newspaper and screams about privacy.

If Google can blur photos and details, why can’t “The Age”.  Sure the story has more impact with the image, but by having the image the story also has hypocrisy! And that is why I blurred out the main part of the image!

Tags: Annoyances, General, Media by Me
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Ok, have phoned Chadstone Vodafone to ask them to make sure that they have a phone in stock for tomorrow as it is the soonest we can get in to swap the phone.  However they can not guarantee they will have one in stock!

They have some (but will not say how many, and will not put one on hold for even 24 hours as ours is technically DOA!)

We are heading to a big fail, unless they just swap the phone out tomorrow I will not be happy.   I think part of the issue comes from the fact I know more than the sales people about the phones

The catch is they were doing very well up until this point.  We walked past the shop on Saturday saw they had the advertising and asked about the phone.  The guy went out the back, unboxed a phone and brought it out with a battery and it fired up.  All in 5 min, very slick. Thus why we brought it then and ther.  We had tried to see the phone a month earlier at Organiser World in the city.  They brought out the box and said see this is the phone…  thus they missed ou on the sale that vodafone got:-)

Will keep you updated

Tags: Annoyances, n78 by Me
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Here is today’s commute to work…  this time we were one car back at the railway crossing, so I decided to film people driving through the flashing lights…

And still have not heard back from “The Leader” yet either

and some one posted a comment as to who cares..

I’ll leave it to Top Gear to show you what happens when you don’t care.

Tags: Annoyances, video by Me
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The Face of Google?

When Google Street View Australia went live, there were of course some images that made it through…

This is one of them

12 Patonga Dr, Patonga, NSW Of course they removed it.. but not before the screen dump appeared…

and the SMH has some more mistakes as well.

Tags: Funny, google by Me
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Google  has turned on street View Australia.  but it is not just Capital Cities.  Places like Broome have been done as well.

This image shows the extent for beyond Melbourne for example.

This is the google video for street video Australia…

and more info here on the Google Australia blog

But there are interesting issues as well.  take here for example….

Notice the bits missing. this is not due to any privacy issue.  My GPS always freaks out going through this area called the Black Spur.  The reason, tree density.  The trees are so thick here, that it is hard for the gps to get a fix, espically when moving at speed.   (from the Kml Page this kml shows what i mean)

And round the same area is a road called The Acheron Way.  A single lane dirt road.. and even that has been done, but it also has issues with tree density.

And here are photos of the type of car that Google used.  These were taken in Toorak on December 2 2007. (Click for bigger versions)

I have also updated the previous post (on boom gate madness) with an iframe to show the google street view in use. By adding in these 360 views you can dramatically expand out a users understanding of an environment.

However you can’t go passed this video to show the power of google maps.

small update :- channel 10 on the late news on 5/8/08 says google street view invades privacy. They of course then go on to say how google will blank out faces or things if you ask them.  Then as the do the voice over on the story they show standard  stock footage of people walking across a pedestrian crossing.  I don’t think they get it yet.

Tags: General, google, video by Me
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