Category: Street VIew

I will happily admit that this post may only be of interest to my Teddington Readers, (Hi Gary !!) but this is just such an interesting video.

It follows the route of the Trolleybus between Twickenham and Teddington on it’s first day of operation in May 1931. Trolleybuses, electric powered buses as you find in many European Cities today were once popular in London, but with great foresight were replaced with diesel powered buses only 20 years later! This trolleybus route is now the 281 bus for example.

What I found really fascinating is just how much of the familiar landscape I see every day has changed in 80 years, in some cases it’s really hard to find a building that you recognise today, especially the turning point in Teddington only a few hundred metres from where I live but almost impossible to recognise.

We are lucky to have rare video like this for it’s completeness but at the same time it’s disappointing that for future generations Google Street View which could offer a similar resouce has had to be mutilated to accomodate privacy concerns.

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)

An interesting article by the BBC’s Berlin correspondent on Germany’s problem with Street View.

The article suggests part of the reason why Germany seems to have such a problem accepting a service that is used in many other developed countries is a cultural distrust of the new, and an inability to innovate. The article quotes Prof Nicolas Apostolopoulos from the Centre for Digital Systems at the Free University in Berlin,

“..people in Britain or the United States tend to see the possibilities of new technology, while Germans tend to see the dangers.”

I’m not convinced this is the case completely, just look at the thriving geo-community in Berlin, and the love of OpenStreetMap in Germany, German cities in OpenStreetMap contain the most detailed mapping you are likely to see anywhere, and that mapping has been contributed by the same people who don’t want pictures of their buildings to appear online ?

An alternative view is that Street View has become a political football in Germany to a greater extent than any other country, and politicians and the media have jumped on the issue, as a way of getting noticed and filling column inches. Google bashing seems to be a popular activity amongst the chattering classes in Berlin..

I really don’t agree with the view that there is “a downside to innovation”,  tell that to the manufacturing industry in the UK. Clearly not all new ideas or products will work, indeed most will fail,  but to try and stop innovation is like trying to ignore gravity!

The voice that seems under represented so far are the potential users of street view in Germany..

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)

The irony of this, surely needs comment.

So two upstanding citizens of Broughton (one of Milton Keynes “villages”) flag down a passing Street View car, have a chat with its driver and tell him to be on his way as they (on behalf of the rest of the village I assume) don’t want their privacy infringed by Street View images. 

An unusual occurrence to be sure, and one which you would expect would go largely unnoticed, because these chaps clearly don’t want to draw attention to themselves or their village because they “fear” criminals will discover that it is actually quite a wealthy part of the world, and run off with they plasma TV’s

So it’s a bit strange then, within days their names are in all of the papers and the wonderful Rory Cellan Jones of the BBC complete with his satellite truck is filming around the village for TV news, beaming live unblurred images into people homes all around the world.

If you really want privacy, why get on the phone to the media and invite them to descend upon your village?

Written and submitted from Sofitel Hotel, Athens Airport, using its wired broadband network.

Just read a very interesting blog post by  Mark Easton of the BBC on “Blobbing” the process of  masking the identity of people from public imagery; while at the same time examining in the most extreme detail the life of  “so called” celebrities.

Mark makes a very good point as to how history will judge our decisions,  I would add to his argument in, as well as representing a whole generation of children as “blob heads” or “pairs of trainers”, we are also by accident misrepresenting modern city life.

My removing images of drunks in the streets, sex shops, and the random suburban semi-detached are we  painting an unrealistic picture of what modern city life is like.  

I’m sure the editors of some tabloids would like to be able to return to the largely mythical view of London represented in Ealing Comedies or Disney Films, where although there were plenty of cheeky chappy criminals, no real harm was done, and everybody went about their business with patriotic duty, the reality then, as it is now is a lot more messy – but such is city life !

London is the vibrant exciting cosmopolitan city I chose to live in, and like all cities it has its rough edges, but that’s what makes it the city it is – take those away and you end up with the version of the UK from Disneyworld.

Written and submitted from the BA Lounge, Gatwick, using its free BT Openzone 802.11 network.