Google Street View Wants You to Direct New Tricycle Imager

An anonymous reader writes "Google is taking suggestions for where you'd like to see the new Street View Trike go. Your favorite park, hiking trail, zoo, school campus hangout or outdoor mall could be going online thanks to Google Street View's new 250 pound tricycle, complete with camera and GPS. According to the press release: 'The Street View trike began as a 20% project by Daniel Ratner, a Senior Mechanical Engineer on the Street View team. "I began thinking about building a bicycle-based Street View system after realizing how many interesting places around the world — ranging from historic landmarks to beautiful trails to shopping districts — aren't accessible by car," says Dan. "When I'm riding the trike, so many people come up to me and ask where it's off to next or how they can get imagery of their favorite spot, so I can't wait to see what our users come up with."'"

Comments

SDSU

[Ethanol-fueled]

Whoa, there's an awesome streetview of San Diego State University in there!

I wonder if the camera is sensitive enough to see the classroom overcrowding, herpes under the skirts of sorority sisters, and traces of cocaine on the Homeland Security majors' noses!

Re:SDSU

[Anonymous Coward]

I like this one better

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&layer=c&cbll=32.775852,-117.07178&panoid=DdCGuMJzJOh7VmC9kd_AZQ&cbp=12,356.73,,2,6.88&ll=32.776017,-117.071772&spn=0,359.98513&z=16

Perhaps Biden is less paranoid ??

[AxDx]

Number One Observatory Circle, Washington D.C.

Places not to go

[cromar]

Your favorite park, hiking trail, zoo, school campus hangout or outdoor mall could be going online thanks to Google Street View...

All of my favorite places (especially hiking trails) would be way on the bottom of my list of things they should photo. Call me selfish, but a lot of my favorite places are places I can go to get away from people, and I'd like to share them as little as possible :)

Re:Places not to go

[Anonymous Coward]

I say the first place we should go is this guy's hiking trials.

Re:Places not to go

[Tellarin]

I say the first place we should go is this guy's hiking trials.

To see he not complete them or something? :-P

the grand canyon

[mydots]

how about a mule rig with all the cameras climbing down (or up) the grand canyon.

Almost a Good idea

[swanzilla]

According to the press release: 'The Street View trike began as a 20% project by Daniel Ratner, a Senior Mechanical Engineer on the Street View team.

Maybe if they would have leveraged Dan more than 20% for this project, he could have put together a collection method that didn't involve a 250 pound trike.

brilliant!

[elloGov]

Playboy mansion

Re:Famous Parks

[MyDixieWrecked]

New York - Central Park

I actually just saw one of these guys today at Rockefeller Center:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spike666/4017224220/

Shortest path != least effort

[benjamindees]

One feature that I think would be really useful, for biking especially, is to be able to find the "flattest" route between two points. Around here, they have been converting old railroad rights of way into bicycle paths, which is nice because they are extremely well-graded. But I'm not even sure where many of them are. I would probably bike more places if I knew I would only have to contend with as few hills as necessary to get there.

Does the tricycle (or the street view car) collect altitude data as well as latitude and longitude? Would it even be theoretically possible to add this in the future?

In a Canoe

[lazarus]

Throw the thing into a canoe and start mapping waterways. Some of the most amazing scenery in the world is only accessible by water (still). If people saw it on-line perhaps they would be motivated to rent a canoe or kayak and get out on the water.

Practically, that thing won't fit in a canoe (unless it is a voyageur canoe), you would probably need the camera mounted on some sort of steadycam, and your going to have to pay attention to battery life. But I think that would be a very cool project.