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Camera Vans To Photograph 50 Million Buildings
dritan writes "A new van unveiled at CeBIT America is equipped with 50 digital cameras and takes pictures every 15 feet -- with the goal of photographing 50 million buildings in the country. These photos could be cross-referenced with aerial photographs so that law enforcement or insurance agencies can get overhead and street level views of the same location -- just by entering an address." Time to hang out the "Hi, Mom!" signs.
Great, now I'll have to wrap my whole house!
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
is it legal?
Oh, great. I just hope when they photograph my house the lawn is mowed and the hedges are trimmed.
Still, this would be a great way to find out who has lawn gnomes, plastic flamingos, and those fat-lady-bending-over things in their gardens.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
I'll be hanging my "All your base.." sign :)
Moderation: +1 pwnage
I just happen to be an enthusiast of the art of architecture. This would be a great way to look up and view buildings by address/location.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Combined with mapping data can we make levels for our favourite games, with pictures of buildings true to life?
ah, mod points
Think about it...It's Open Source and community based and it would look Great on Film!
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
It'd be interesting to see how such a survey affects sites like MapQuest... as it'd be real useful to have the building you're drving to circled on a street-level picture when you're traveling in an unknown-to-you metro area.
remove the swastika flags from the vans before they come prowling through my neighborhood?
"When viewed from this angle, all the bare ass cheeks pressed against the windows spell out SCO SUCKS".
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I don't mind this at all. They may look at the address I gave them, 1060 W addison, Chicago, any time that they want...
May 25, 2004
Van Could Take Photographs While Driving
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:14 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- An odd-looking van sprouts 13 digital cameras that its builder wants to use to photograph 50 million buildings in the country while driving, taking pictures every 15 feet.
The van's drive-by snaps would be matched against GPS satellite positioning data and aerial photographs in a database. Police, insurance agents and others then could call up overhead and street-level views simply by entering an address.
The setup from Imageos Inc. was one of the security-related exhibits on display at this year's CeBIT America technology trade show, which opened here Tuesday. Other companies were showing software tools to secure wireless networks, monitor employee surfing and protect users from viruses and spyware.
The main market for Imageos' photographs would be insurance appraisals, but the Boulder, Colo., startup is also touting the pictures for ``homeland security'' applications, law enforcement and emergency services.
Imageos' Paul Jurasin said that thanks to the aerial photos, the database can show whether a house has a swimming pool or a fence in the back, details that could be of interest both to insurance companies and police.
``It gives them more information than they would get by driving up to a house, before they get there,'' Jurasin said.
So far, Imageos has photographed only Orlando, Fla. If it gets funding, it plans to photograph the 25 largest cities in the country over the next five years using more than a dozen vans.
Elsewhere on the convention floor, Hewlett-Packard Co. showed a laptop computer that is secured against non-computing attacks, namely water, dust and physical impact. The nr3600 is HP's first ``rugged'' laptop, an entry into a market dominated by Panasonic's Toughbooks.
Rugged laptops are aimed at workers who need to bring their computers to rough construction sites, deserts and combat. The nr3600, on sale now for $4,099 and up, meets military specifications for shock resistance and sealing against the elements. It is joined by a keyboard-less ruggedized ``tablet'' for $600 less.
The nr3600 has a large carrying handle, but for portability, it can't beat the OQO, an ``ultra personal computer'' about the size of a paperback book. The small LCD screen slides away to reveal a tiny keyboard intended for thumb-typing.
It has most of the functionality of a full computer: The Windows XP machine has a hard drive, built-in wireless networking and a USB port.
The OQO is designed for simpler tasks while on the move. When you sit down for serious work, you attach it to a docking station that connects to a full monitor, mouse and keyboard. The OQO thus aims to replace Palm-style organizers, laptops and desktops.
San Francisco-based OQO Inc. has been promising its gadget for two years. It says it's now finally shipping this fall for somewhat less than $2,000.
Nifty gadgets aside, the latest year's upswing in the technology business was in little evidence at show. Organizers expected 350 to 360 exhibitors, slightly fewer than last year, which was the first time CeBIT held an American show.
``It's OK. It's not buzzing with activity, but it's OK,'' said Farhad Keyvan, who was visiting from Bridgewater, N.J., where he runs a small software company.
Mark Dineen, the show's managing director, acknowledged that some large U.S. companies have ``pulled away'' from the trade show business.
However, Microsoft Corp. and enterprise software giants PeopleSoft Inc. and Siebel Systems Inc. were added to the roster of exhibitors this year, and a greater number of preregistrations led organizers to expect up to 50 percent more attendees than the 8,500 that showed up last year. The show runs till Thursday.
CeBIT America is an offshoot of the world's largest technology fair, which is held Hanover, Germany, in March. That show had 6,411 exhibitors this year.
My house is sheltered from the street by a thick strand of trees and planters. Hopefully the federales will use this information to keep out of my impatiens when they storm my house.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Verizon will send its spokesman to accompany them. Every time a picture is taken, that guy will say "Can you hear me now?"
Then, one picture will include his corpse on the front lawn, and James Earl Jones will get his job back.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
And yet, if I take pictures anywhere near a Federal building, subway tunnel or bridge, even from a public sidewalk, the goons will want to catalogue me as a potential threat.
[
Here's a no reg required copy of the AP article.
I
Madrid and Bercelona are alaready online, and most buildings have multiple views.
check it out here. However the site seems to be running very slow at the moment.
For some sample addresses, you can use Calle Serrano 75, or Francisco Silvela 20
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Ok, here's my plan... I'll hang a painting I made on the house with a disclaimer that it's not to be reproduced...
then, after they take the picture, I'll demand access to the content database since I know they have my IP in there...
if they refuse, I'll lobby Congess to pass a law that has the DOJ go after them for me !
Oh yeah, I almost forgot (this is
Step 4: Profit !
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
A year or so ago, Cook County officials sent a van around photographing every house and residential street in the county. They planned to offer the pictures on the internet, but I'm not sure how successful they were.
And yes, it made the news and raised a lot of controversy, but in the end, Cook County told its critics they could shove it, and went ahead and did it anyway.
I guess its just another case of "Can't fight City Hall"....
Now, if a private citizen had attempted to do the same, you can bet they would have been arrested. And if someone tried to do it now, they'd get thrown in jail as a suspected terrorist.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
How do they maintain this image collection so that it stays up to date? If a single building changes (is modified, demolished, etc.) will they go back and photograph it? Or will they just do huge city sweeps every year or so? I would think they'd be doing the latter. It'd be like a photographic street directory.
OLPC Australia
Wake up call, people. Your house, unless it's behind a fence, is already accessible visually to the public. I can walk out my door right now, with my camera, and snap pictures of every house on my street.
What'll that get me? Not much, except a bunch of pictures of houses on my street.
If this helps the 911 guys find my house better in case of an emergency, good for them. If it never happens, they've got a picture of a blue house with tan trim.
Someone please enlighten me as to how this could possibly be bad.
They may need more vans.
Oh, sure. Give them a handwriting sample while you're at it.
You know what?
In Allegheny County, PA, you can go to the county assessment website (http://www2.county.allegheny.pa.us/RealEstate/Sea rch.asp)
and search on street name, address, OWNER, etc. In the information for most houses are also the pictures of said house. So this is nothing really new, at least around here.
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
If this helps the 911 guys find my house better in case of an emergency, good for them. If it never happens, they've got a picture of a blue house with tan trim.
:)
Well, they'll have a convincing case for governmental intervention in the next home decorating decision you make
The french already did this - check out pages jaunes (pages jaunes is french for Yellow Pages). You can actually look up an address and see a photo of it.
from Bugs Bunny:
Just get a big canvas outside your house, paint a tunnel, and watch what happens!
<insert witty linux comment here>
Pennsylvania's Deptartment of Transportation has been building a video log of the major state routes. It's a similar concept, but their implementation is focused on road maintenance and identification rather than address mapping. http://164.156.5.83/ividlog/video_locate.asp
on how many pictures will have a dinosaur?
Well, for starters, what happens when your house isn't blue anymore with tan trim...and the fire truck drives past your house? Given how much of a pain in the ass it is to do the photos, do they honestly intend to update the DB constantly?
Out in western MA, they had a very easy solution to all this. The town gave out bright plastic signs with a picture of a fire truck and the street number of the house...and a little metal stake to hang it from. Instructions on where to place it relative to -your- driveway were given. This was done because many people don't have mailboxes(they have PO boxes in town), or they were confusingly located(ie across the street, at the end of a private driveway, etc).
Works perfectly. This is just some urban idiot who doesn't understand that the problem's already been solved- just not everyone has chosen to implement it.
Please help metamoderate.
Perhaps... Or maybe it would be a good time to start.
coat your house in mirrors
I read a claim that when it comes to navigation, men's minds are more spacially oriented while women's minds are more landmark oriented. Thus, maps work better for men than for women.
Women can make due with written directions, but what if there was a way to give directions by providing a photograph of every intersection from the 1st person, with the turns marked by arrows? Instead of memorizing street names or distances, you could just say "I'll turn when I see this, I'll turn when I see that..." You could be completely illiterate and still navigate. To make such a system possible, you'd have to photograph every intersection from every approach, at day and night, every season (which is frequent enough to account for new construction in most areas). It would be very labor intensive, but it would provide a very valuable service. Assuming illiterate, map-incompetent people have enough money to pay for it.
there are 2.27+ million miles of paved roads in the US, not to mention all the unpaved ones...
First off, even at 30 miles per hour 24 hours a day, it'd take about 8 1/2 years to take the photos.
Second, taking 50 pictures every fifteen feet comes to ~17 thousand pictures per mile. Even at a measly 1 megapixel each, that's 17gigs per mile. Multiply that by a couple million miles and I think you may have just a little storage and database problem....