Google Street View Tricycle

By now you can tell that I'm totally obsessed with Google Street View. Having previously appeared both in person and vehicular avatar on Google's effort to visualize the mapped world, I feel a sort of connection to the project.

It was my awareness of the peculiar, camera gantry-topped car and chancing to recognize one coming down the street that created the opportunity for minimal Internet stardom. In case anyone else is interested in replicating, I wanted to share that Google is now 'off-roading' the effort to photograph parks and trails, off piste, so to speak, with these nifty man-powered tricycles. So look out next time you're plodding through the back country.

The camera equipment looks heavy, good because you probably have to move relatively slow to get good photos, but this must be a hell of a job, particularly in hilly country. Still I know plenty of hipsters who'd love nothing more than to slow down some hiking yuppies with this kind of work.

My Second Act on Google Street View

I was pretty stoked back in 2008 when my car appeared on Google Street View parked out in front of my folks' house in Boise. However, being that said car was parked there from June to September 2007, it was as likely as not that should the Google camera-car drive by sometime that summer, my car would be there ready for its cameo. What are the chances lightning strikes twice?

Flash forward, probably last spring some time, and my amigo Ben and I spotted one of these Google Street View camera-cars rolling down 2nd street in Old City with its conspicuous roof-mounted gantry. Here's the moment of recognition captured in digital perpetuity:

Spotting the opportunity from the cross-walk....

We makes it pay off big time, brah!

I made a mental note of the corner: 2nd and Market, not too hard to remember, and just happened to check back in with Google Street View yesterday. To my surprise and delight here we are looking about as douchey as we do in real life, proving once more that Google is succeeding in its mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Avoid us at all costs it says.

Make Way For Technology

The internet's on fire about the deer that Google killed with one of its Street View vans. Google even went so far as apologizing.

I may be reading too much into the pun in the apology (oh deer) and the requisite flipping of the apology into a choir-directed preach about the importance of road safety, but I think the underlying attitude says something like

Fine, but what for? Clearly this deer wasn't destined for the future...  So make way for technology!

Somehow this smacks of the familiar and disingenuous apology and public good deed routine of a celebrity checking into rehab after an embarassing drunken incident.

But I can kind of see their point. To make a great omelet you have to break a few eggs. Plus which, there are too many deer anyway, you plainly can't even make a good map without running into one.

My Hooptie on Google Street View

Google Street View has some folks concerned about privacy, while others, like myself, celebrate the minimal Internet celebrity of their city, home, possessions and, in rare cases, persons that by long odds made it into the Street View shot of a given location just as Google's contracted Immersive Media Volkswagen, with its odd, satellite-tower appendage, drove by snapping pics every 30 feet.

Given that Street View originally launched in just a handful of cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Las Vegas to start), I was surprised today to first find it now includes Raleigh, NC (part of the Research Triangle Park) before experimenting with my home address and finding not just my parent's home, but my fucking car parked in front of it, meaning I defied the odds in more ways than one. Those are California plates on my hooptie and I have driven my car back from the Bay Area exactly one time... so what kind of odds did I defy? Or, was it fate? (Spooky! I'm feeling all tingly and connected with everything.)

Anyway, I think the privacy police and the tort system opportunists are way off on this one. Street View is an awesome project because it just made my car famous, among other benefits.

If you feel like peeping your own haunts, to see any lasting record of your presence made Universal on the Interwebs by Google, here is the list of areas where they are currently providing street-level imagery:

• Albany and Schenectady
• Boise
• Boston
• Chicago
• Dallas
• Denver
• Detroit
• Ft. Worth
• Houston
• Indianapolis
• Juneau
• Kansas City
• Las Vegas
• Los Angeles
• Manchester
• Miami
• Milwaukee
• Minneapolis
• New York City
• Orlando
• Philadelphia
• Phoenix
• Pittsburgh
• Portland
• Providence
• Research Triangle Park, NC
• Salt Lake City
• San Antonio
• San Diego
• San Francisco Bay Area
• St. Paul
• Tucson

This is way more than I expected, and you just might be pleasantly surprised too.