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Russian Town Puts Giant Smiley On Google Maps

Posted by samzenpus on from the working-together dept.

Toramir writes "Citizens of the Russian town Chelyabinsk calculated when the satellite, QuickBird, which takes images for Google Earth and Google Maps, would cross above their city and used people to make a giant smiley face. A rock concert on the main square attracted many people and everyone got a yellow cape. It looks like someone at Google was quicker than usual to put up the new data. Maybe Google likes the idea of an entire town working hard to get its 15 minutes of fame. The article has a screenshot of Google Maps and images taken directly at the event."

4 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's a bad photoshop by alain94040 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To be fair, since the other pictures look authentic, I'd say the meeting really happened. It's just that Google wasn't fast enough to record it. That shows you a limitation of Google :-) There are still a few things you can do without Google noticing right away.

    Alain - fairsoftware.net

  2. Re:Fake images by maglor_83 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Never mind the fact that they say they timed when the satellite would come over, but it's an aerial photo.

    Also, they did a similar thing on James May's 20th Century, where he made a giant space invader to be captured on a satellite image.

  3. In sovied russia, tech.slashdot is the new idle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I had hoped idle would stay confined to idle. This is not technology.

    This ... is ... IDLE!!! </300>

  4. Re:Fake images by easyTree · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd much rather just see a stream of images from what is actually happening and make up my own mind. There less editorial control the better.

    Perhaps you've forgotten that the purpose of news isn't to inform, it's to coerce opinion.

    --
    Requiem for the American Dream