Posts tagged Googlemaps at Switched

Posts with tag googlemaps

Google Street View Becomes a Stage for Performance Art

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Nov 7th 2008 at 12:22PM

Google Maps' Street View is rife with interesting little Easter eggs, but most of the hidden gems are unintentional. We've gathered creepy invasions of privacy and seen the Google Street View team posing outside its Mountain View, California headquarters. Now, with the cooperation of the Street View team, Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley have turned Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh's Northside into a canvas for a series of staged scenes.

The project, called Street With a View, features neighborhood residents acting out a parade, a marathon, and a practice for a garage band. Moving down Sampsonia way and looking about the 36- degree field of view reveals smaller scenes like a sword fight and a love laser.

Check out the Street With a View site for more details about the project and to be taken straight to the narrow roadway lined with performers. [From: Google Blogoscoped]

Best Election Resources on the Web

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Nov 4th 2008 at 12:10PM

Regardless of your political affiliation, there's no denying the historic nature of today's presidential race. Turnout for the U.S. election is expected to reach record numbers. So how do you keep up with the election and gather relevant information without succumbing to the noise and theatrics of the 24-hour-cable news channels? Well, the Internet (and NPR) are here to help offer you more options, if not more substance, than either Fox News or CNN possibly could.

Information about the candidates: If you are one of those confounding people who still hasn't made up their mind, this is your last chance to pick a candidate. You can find out information about each of the candidates' positions and records at Project Vote Smart and OnTheIssues.org. However, if that's too much reading for you, you can also find out which nominee is closest to your positions by answering a few questions over at Glassbooth.
Where the money is coming from: Funding of presidential campaigns is always a major concern, but it's especially timely this year with Obama's groundbreaking and record-breaking fundraising efforts. You can see where the money is coming from at OpenSecrets.org and Follow the Money.
Fact-checking the candidates: Political campaigns are filled with questionable claims and attacks, and this year is no exception. FactCheck.org and PolitiFact evaluate claims and commercials to tell you who is stretching the truth and who is outright lying.
Where to vote: If you're not sure where you're supposed to vote, Google Maps and Vote411.org can help you locate your polling place.
Share your voting experience: PBS and YouTube have partnered to present Video Your Vote, which asks people to document their voting experience in hopes of protecting people against voting irregularities and suppression. You can also share your experiences via Twitter which is running it's own dedicated election-themed channel. Check with the Citizen Media Law Project's 'Documenting Your Vote' guide to see what the laws are in your state.
Get live election results: RealClearPolitics offers not just poll-watching, but election results, too, and serves to aggregate political news and commentary from various sources. You can also catch live results from AOL News (part of AOL, Switched's parent company), Google Maps and CNN, which offer an incredible amount of detail about exit polls and precinct-by-precinct results via their election maps for the truly obsessive.
Have a laugh: As serious as the election and its impact on America are, it's important to not get all frazzled, sweating over the live results. Check out the Indecision2008 blog from the 'Daily Show' and the Onion's War for the White House for a more lighthearted take on political news.

Now get out there and vote! If you should encounter any issues or difficulties, don't hesitate to report them to Election Protection (a non-partisan voter advocacy group) at 1-866-OUR-VOTE.

New iPhone Software to Include Google Street View, Mass-Transit Directions

by Nilay Patel, posted Oct 27th 2008 at 2:25PM

The T-Mobile G1's Google Maps Street View implementation is one of the slickest features of the first Android phone, but it looks like Apple's going to keep feature parity -- the latest builds of iPhone OS 2.2 seeded to developers have Street View, as well as the ability to give mass transit directions. That's pretty useful for cityfolk like us -- and we're also stoked that line-in audio is now supported in the SDK, giving devs the ability to create voice recorders and other interesting audio apps. Of course, there's no word on when 2.2 will actually arrive, but until then we suppose we'll live with regular, non-data-augmented streets. Lots of screenshots of the new features at the read link.

[Via MacRumors]

Google Maps Incorporates New York City Transit Maps

by Peter Mychalcewycz, posted Sep 24th 2008 at 6:47PM

Google is finally mapping something that matters (with all due respect to the earth and oceans): subway routes in New York City.

Yes, Google has decided to add New York City Transit to its infinite list of things already mapped (you'll find other transit systems mapped here). Now, when someone searches for a location in the city, they will be supplied with a list of accompanying mass transit options, driving directions, and for those of us feeling extra-healthy, walking directions. The ever popular Street View will be joined by other features like restaurant view and we assume creepy voyeur view (we made that last one up).

We are sure this new technology will come as a relief to some of the 8.5 million people that use NYC mass transit every weekday. [From: USA Today]

Google Maps for Mobile Gets Street View and Walking Directions

by Sean Cooper, posted Sep 19th 2008 at 8:52AM

Google Maps for mobile just stepped up in the feature department with Google's inclusion of Street View in its newest version. In case you've been hiding under a rock -- or live in almost any other country aside from the US -- Street View offers up a storefront take on your world rather than the traditional top down look you see with common maps. The new version also includes walking directions which will ignore pesky one-way streets and the like. While the list of supported handsets is missing, we do see BlackBerry listed and Java-enabled phones, too, so do us a kindness, grab it and let us know if it works on yours.

Google-Enabled BMWs Coming to US Streets

by Tim Stevens, posted Sep 16th 2008 at 1:45PM

For more than a year lucky BMW-owning Germans have been hitting Google Maps, and, more recently the rest of the Internets, at blazing (cough) EDGE speeds from their sport-seats. Now, Beemer-owning Americans are getting a piece of the action with a little help from AT&T's GSM-friendly network. However, while there's no mention in the release, BMW Blog thinks US cars will be limited to GPRS, not EDGE.

All 2009 American BMW models, except for the lowly X3 mini-'Ute (which BMW doesn't bother manufacture itself), will get Google Maps integration, enabling the driver or passenger to search for businesses from the dash. Directions can be piped to the car's nav system and calls placed via in-car Bluetooth. At $199 per-year, it's not exactly a steal, but that does include standard BMW Assist functionality such as locating your car if it's stolen or dispatching an ambulance if you're in a horrible accident.

Yeah, we only care about the searching too.

Giant Tribute to Lenin Found on Google Earth

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Sep 9th 2008 at 10:45AM

Giant Tribute to Lenin Found in Google Maps

It must be sad when you spend all sorts of time and effort on something and no one notices for over 30 years. The woodcutters who created the massive tribute to Lenin have probably long since forgotten about their handiwork, which is a shame since only now is it being appreciated by a wider audience. The Telegraph reports that it was recently discovered by the blog EnglishRussia via Google Earth, and the message -- made up of trees -- was carved into the Siberian backwoods, near Kazakhstan.

The roughly 262 foot tall letters spell out "Lenin is 100," celebrating the communist leader's birthday in 1970. 38 years later, the letters are still perfectly clear and readable.

Why exactly the tribute was carved into a remote forest that no one will see is still a bit of a mystery, but some have speculated that it was a message intended to be picked up by American spy satellites. [From: Telegraph]

"Complete Privacy Does Not Exist," Says Google

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 4th 2008 at 11:32AM

You may remember in April when we reported that the Boring family was suing Google over images of their home appearing in Google Map's Street View. Now, Google has filed its brief with the court that is basically legalese for "you've got to be kidding me."

The main thrust of Google's argument is that "complete privacy does not exist" because of technology. The search giant countered the Boring's claim of invasion of privacy by stating that the family "lives in a residential community in the twenty-first-century United States, where every step upon private property is not deemed by law to be an actionable trespass... Today's satellite-image technology means that even in today's desert, complete privacy does not exist. In any event, Plaintiffs live far from the desert and are far from hermits."

The dismissive and frankly cocky nature of Google's may put some off, but we can't help but agree with them. Photos of the outside of a home hardly constitutes an invasion of privacy, especially if more detailed photos are already available on a public county Web site. [Source: The Smoking Gun]

51 Places You're Not Supposed to See on Google Maps

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 16th 2008 at 7:01PM

Google Maps may be great for sightseeing in areas of the world to remote, dangerous, or expensive for you to visit, and even better for creepily checking in on the dwellings of friends and family, but there are a few places that have been taken off of the service.

Governments have had military installations removed, residents have had homes and entire towns cleared from the site, and sites of a sensitive nature (such as nuclear power stations) are missing for security reasons. Even some colleges such as MIT and SUNY Stonybrook are blurred out to obscure the location of research laboratories. There are some odd entries as well, such as the Playland Amusement Park in Rye, NY and the the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands.

All told, the site IT Security has found 51 separate instances of locations being removed from Google Maps and Google Earth. You'll find the full list after the break. [Source: IT Security]

Gallery: Google Maps Censored

Continue reading 51 Places You're Not Supposed to See on Google Maps

HealthMap Tracks Outbreaks With Google Maps

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 11th 2008 at 11:02AM

There are plenty of tools out there to track disease and infections, but only HealthMap.Org uses Google Maps to give you a frightening visual of outbreaks around the world.

The service uses a complex algorithm that searches Google News, World Health Organization alerts and other online news and discussion groups for reports of outbreaks. The algorithm is able to distinguish between articles about cases of illness and reports of vaccine availabilities or other general health alerts by parsing the language used by reporters. It is even able to detect and filter out duplicate reports of the same outbreak from multiple news sources. The reports are then listed as points on a map grouped by either country and state or province.

Though the site is aimed at health professionals, the information is freely available to the public. So tracking the latest outbreak of salmonella-tainted tomatoes should be much easier. [Source: ABC News]

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