March 19th, 2008
Quantum Heap
In Google’s continuing effort to allow us to see all our world has to offer without ever having to put on a pair of pants, they’re now offering a feature called “Street View.”
Have you seen this? It’s an option you can open, after you’ve looked up a location on Google Maps, that allows you to move freely, up and down city streets, viewing real photos of all the surroundings. It’s pretty neat…and creepy.
According to the internet, in order to create this application, Google had to have photographers cruising every roadway of a designated area, with an 11 lens camera mounted to the top of a car, shooting constantly. This would explain why they’re only able to release a few “Street View”-ready places at a time. What it doesn’t explain is how I never noticed this Dr. Suess-sounding set-up pulling up next to me at a stoplight at any point in the past year. Raleigh has, after all, just had its “street view” activated.
When I found out about this, I, of course, immediately looked up my place of residence, to see if one could perhaps see me in my window — shirtless and picking my nose, ideally.
No dice there, but, almost as exciting was seeing my car out front.
I went one click further down the road, and lo and behold, my car was there again…in a different spot!
Apparently just before the corner of Morgan and Mayo was the photographer’s stopping point on a previous day, because these are clearly different weather conditions.
The next place I “visited” was my parent’s house in Cary, and my car was there too!
(It’s harder to tell here, but trust me, that is the corner of my ’88 Nova. I’ve been driving it for over 10 years now. I’d know that corner anywhere.)
I guess what I’m getting at here is, in Google’s ““Street View’ World,” I’m like some sort of mystical journeyman. Zipping through dimensions in a clunky sedan. Letting the old girl rest in three places, all at once.
Could even be more than three, actually. I’m still checking the roadsides to see if the Google car might have passed me by one of the many times I was broken down on the side of the road.
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