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Google Tricycles To Map Footpaths For Street View
CNETNate writes "To advance its Street View service this summer, Google is poised to unleash the unstoppable power of human legs. Google will deploy pedal-powered tricycles — the company calls them 'Google Trikes' — mounted with 360 degree Street View cameras to map areas inaccessible by its fleet of Street View cars." The article indicates that the trikes will first see use in the UK, to map out public walking paths, but one anonymous commenter said: "This must be bogus — you are not allowed to cycle on public footpaths in the UK, I can't believe Google would have overlooked such a fundamental fact. Not to mention that the vehicle pictured wouldn't fit down most paths." PC World features the trikes in Rome.
With as much animosity as google street views has already been met with
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/02/1731231
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/13/0055234
I can just imagine what these guys riding around on bikes will meet up with - Can anyone say moving target?
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
As a bicyclist, I'd love it if google had decent maps of off-street bike paths, such that I could use google maps' normal direction-finding feature with these. I've lived in lots of cities with numerous such paths, and they're usually out of the way and hard to find if you don't already know that they're there. It would be great to have a feature that a) lets me find them, and b) tells me exactly how far out of my way I'd need to go for the added safety/pleasantness of using them.
I am within my rights to take a picture on a public street and then upload it to the internet. I am within my rights to publish my views, on anything, freely on the internet. I am within my rights to worship or not worship freely as I please. I am free to cast my votes for representatives in the various assemblies that pass and enact the laws of the land. So is everyone else.
But rights do not, and should not scale upwards so easily as they scale across society.
Google's ultimate objective, and they're danm well able to achieve it, is to map, index and photograph the entire world and put it all online for everyone to gawk at. One company. Worldwide coverage. Of everyone, and everything. No recourse. No appeal. It's clear that in the process of inductively scaling up the rights and freedoms we all enjoy to such gargantuan proportions, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
I am free to own a newspaper or pamphlet and to use it to express my opinions. Must it then follow that I should be free, if I had the money for it, to own as many newspapers as I like in order to disseminate my opinions?
I am free to worship in any religion that I please and ask others to follow me. Does that mean that I should be free to amass as large a host of followers as I like and have my will of all of them?
I am free to vote for my political representatives. Does this mean that I should be free to vote on every single piece of legislation they propose, or to propose and vote on legislation I or others demand at a whim?
You can't inductively keep scaling rights up and up. Eventually you will end up with highly, undesirable, outcomes. Google Street View is just such an example. I don't want my house, garden, neighborhood and face plastered all over the web for everyone to gawk at. You don't want it. Nobody wants it.
Yet we are all to accept the slow inductive argument that at each camera click and image upload, Google is always well within its rights. Yet the final outcome, colossal in its arrogance is repugnant to almost everyone involved. The inductive argument is invalid. No one should be allowed to do what Google are doing. Least of all a private corporation.
Rights do not scale up. The bigger you are, the less rights you should be entitled to. And the scope of your rights should be similarly curtailed. Allowing unfettered freedoms to the richest, largest and most powerful will only lead to them becoming overmighty, and we will all suffer for it.
May the Maths Be with you!
Why they didn't buy a bunch of Segways for it, is beyond me.
Trikes are cheaper to buy than Segways which start at $2,400.
Trikes are cheaper to maintain than Segways.
Trikes are easier to maintain than Segways since all you need is a regular bike mechanic that can be found in any good bike store.
Segways require electrical power just to stand up, that kind of power costs money. Trikes don't use any power when standing up because they've got three wheels.
Segways require electrical power to operate, trikes don't and hence have a lower carbon footprint.
Segways have to be charged up, trikes don't.
Trikes are more efficient.
Trikes do pretty much the same job for a lot less money.
There's no enough room on a Segway to hold the equipment, there is enough room on a trike.
Riding a trike is a lot healthier than driving a Segway because it uses human power.
Want any more?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Why is it ok in the public eye for google to do this, but when the gov't does this it's BigBrother and 1984 all over again?
Put cameras on everyone's cats.... You'll get a lot more than a "street view".....
HDGary secures my bank
Segways are always tilting forward and back. Bicycles are always tilting side to side. Trikes stay pretty level. That probably makes it easier to stitch together all the photos.
TFA says "... to map areas inaccessible by its fleet of Street View cars."
Places like downtown areas that don't allow cars any more. Or really old downtown areas where the streets were never wide enough for vehicles. If you've ever tried to find a specific store in the marketplace of a city like Istanbul then you'll quickly understand the value of bicycle and pedestrian based Street View.
Why troll? I thought it was a good question.
In my other life, I eat cats.
I don't know. If the natives are going to come after me with their pitchforks, I'd rather be in a vehicle with better get away speed.