Google Street View – awesome and get over the privacy

You may know that Google offers quite a cool map service. It has satellite imagery of most of the earth, as well as good road maps, etc. Pretty cool to check out a satellite image of your house. For instance this is the building that I am currently sitting in:

Recently they added a really cool feature called Street Views. They got some cars with about 10 cameras mounted on the roof and cruised around some big american cities. Now when you are in Google Maps you can get a look at what you would see if you were on the ground (only in those cities though).

This is pretty freaky because now you can see individual people. For instance one woman found her flat and could see her cat looking out of the window! I think it’s awesome and I wish that we had it in Cape Town. People see you walking around all the time – now there is a permanent record. It’s not the end of the world – get over it.

Here is a site dedicated to interesting sightings in Street Views. My favorite so far is this one which captures a small car crash in progress: