Google Creates Tour de France Video Maps

An anonymous reader writes "In honor of the Tour de France's start today, Google has used its awesome Street View technology to compile amazing Tour de France route views. A great description of the technology that went into creating this can be found in this LinuxDevices article. At least, I'm assuming these are the cameras — Google acknowledged using Elphel cameras for book scanning and 'capturing street imagery in Google Maps.' And from the article, the cameras have come a long way from the days when crazy cat ladies and other privacy freaks scuppered Street View in San Francisco a couple of years back."

Comments

Yeah, those crazy privacy freaks!

[Macthorpe]

the cameras have come along way from the days when crazy cat ladies and other privacy freaks scuppered Street View in San Francisco a couple of years back."

Too right! I mean, everybody should just let Google photograph whoever they want and publish it on the web to drive hits to their website. Anybody who thinks otherwise is a privacy freak!

Re:That's nice, the problem is the Tour itself

[mtdenial]

I do follow pro cycling fairly seriously and always look forward to the coverage of the the Tour. If you are complaining about doping, however, you cannot really talk about the past 'heroic days' without being hypocritical. I cannot speak for the others, but the champion Coppi wasn't clean. Amphetamines and good old fashioned alcohol were heavily used back in the day.

I have as much hatred for cheaters than some, more so than most. In my high school days I was a nationally ranked athlete (not cycling) and after more than one major event was privileged enough to get to pee in a cup in front of a variable number of rapt observers. That sort of humiliation for a clean athlete leaves it's mark for the sort of people who ruin it for the rest of us.

With all that said, however, it doesn't take away from the Tour being one of the most difficult sporting events on the planet. It's a damned impressive race all around. Maybe the top contenders are doping/cheating, as there is so much money on the line for the top guys, but there (I hope, though opinons vary) are a decent percentage of racers who are clean. My only real wish is that when they do get busted, they just accept it and not try to get out of it. See David Millar vs Tyler Hamilton.