Andy

So late this morning I'm in my driveway, garage open, just started the car. I'm holding a shovel and a hoe, removing a nice little critter my cat decided to leave in my garage. I hear a car coming around the bend. It's a small 4 door sedan, maybe a Neon, that size anyway. On the back trunk lid is a round GPS receiver. The ones you see the highway crews, surveyors, etc using. On the roof is an upside down "T", the bottom of the T up towards the sky. It was about 3 foot tall. At the top was a red cone like device. On the door was a magnetic sign with Google's logo. There I am, shovel and hoe in hand, staring at a google logo thinking, this will make a good shot for street view...

So what do you think? A street view image capturing device? In some of their photos you can see a shadow of a vehicle that is taking the pictures. That one always looks like a van with a dome on the top. Maybe they ditched that for a more fuel efficient car?

Max

Pics: Google Streetview Camera Vehicles Spotted All Over US

Yeah I think they have a deal with Immersive Media for getting the content, and they have several mules from what I can tell. The most common around here is a prius or that tiny Chevy model that I can't remember.

I haven't seen one myself, but I have looked at the photos and they are getting closer to my neck of the woods every day :Q. I was thinking about printing a giant google logo and sticking it to my neighbors house so that they'd never know but the streetview would


It's a little bit scary to me, only because I remember when finding someone on the internet was actually something you had to work on doing. But at the same time, the technology is cool.

Andy

It was indeed one of theirs. I looked like one of these cars.



I had a good, WTF is that look on my face too. Google doesn't have any street view stuff for about 100 miles from me. Myabe they are preparing for a major update with a ton of new stuff.

Max

They are constantly on patrol, but they have to fill up a hard drive, sync and countersync it and spin it up with however many other vehicles they have in the area...then push it out. The easy part is the photgraphy

Just check streetview often...it updates without any mentions, at least I see the roads around me getting more and more blue daily.

Andy

They finally updated streetview and indeed, the car I saw did take my picture. However they must have gotten tired of people complaining because the quality of the image is so bad not only can you not see me, almost everything in my garage is too dark to see either. Really looks like a 1.3 megapixal camera phone image, dark and grainy. A far cry from the original streetview images they started with.

neurotic

I am not very hot about the whole concept of Street view, it seems overkill and unnecessary and also takes the suspense out of a new street or a new place. Street view should be banned all together.

astrodanco

Fortunately I live in a private community that has gates which the Google vehicle drivers have not attempted to sneak through (and which they could easily do if they really wanted to). They have not traversed my street nor photographed my embarrassingly badly landscaped and poorly maintained front yard, overstuffed garage, peeling deck paint, etc. I originally voted against installing the gates, but now I'm warming up to them...

Andy

I'm not for or against street view. I live near the coast. The US has had a coastal records project for decades. They take photos from planes of the coastline. They aren't as detailed as say a street view image, but in later years where they are using better cameras, there is remarkable detail.

I've noticed a few places where the Google car did go onto private property and take photos; through locked gates that is.

gpsnetwerx

i was at a navigation conference last month in savannah ga. one of the vendors was showing me a system google is testing for streetview. along with the digital camera (10 mp in this case) the are going to incorporate data from a laser scanner to generate 3d point clouds with image overlay for 3d scenery. the point data is good to +/-45cm.