Tuesday, August 07, 2007

I Know Where You Live(d): Google Maps Street View Coming to DC?

It looks like we'll finally be able to waste countless hours looking at streets we actually recognize rather than waste countless hours looking at streets we don't. Why? Because Google Maps' Supercreepy Street View tool might be coming to DC.



A picture of the Immersive Media car used to collect images for Lord Google's infinite appetite that I successfully stole from a better website.




Reports have come in from a variety of sources that Immersive Media, the company doing Google's bidding to capture millions of 360-degree photos along the streets of New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver (seriously, why Denver?) for use in its dominant Maps feature, has been prowling the streets of DC in retrofitted VW Beetles. Normally, anything that's retrofitted is okay in my book, but you just have wonder about privacy issues in this case. For instance, what if I'm caught coming out of Rhino Bar in Georgetown at 3am with a 17-year old boy who's visiting his older brother at GW? Or what if I'm filmed shooting lethal doses of heroin into the homeless fellows lining up at St. Ursula's for their Sunday meal? These are all serious considerations we have to.....seriously consider.


Some people that have seen the aforementioned harvesters of photos:
Blogoscoped, June 6
Flickr, June 21


While new cities have recently been added to Google's list of owned cities, such as LA, Orlando, Galveston (again, seriously?), apparently it took several months after spotting the Immersive Media cars before the feature went live, so there's probably some time left to wait.


So in the meantime, DC, keep homoeroticizing and homiciding to your heart's content. The party's almost over.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Coming very soon...there were four more cities added today:

http://streetviewgallery.corank.com

F.J. Delgado said...

Funny image of you leaving a bar with a 17-year old boy.

Anonymous said...

Brice Lord, I like your orange suit.

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/index.html#utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-google-svn&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=street%20view

Anonymous said...

Brice Lord, I like your orange suit.

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/index.html#utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-google-svn&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=street%20view

Brice Lord said...

What a bunch of comedians you all are.

CJ said...

Awesome. I have been waiting for this to happen since... well.. since I learned of Streetview about a week ago.

Also, about that double-spacing problem after my pictures... how do I fix that? I don't want people thinking I live between Dupont and Adam's Morgan with my "fiance."