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Google Street View Backpack Now Available To Volunteers

Posted by timothy on from the salt-mines-of-poland dept.

It's not just for obscure Japanese islands anymore: reader NobleSavage writes with news that "If you're a tourism board, non-profit, university, research organization or other third party who can gain access and help collect imagery of hard to reach places, you can apply to borrow the Trekker and help map the world." You can also help map the world (albeit without the very neat Trekker backpack cam) without an application process via OpenStreetMap. But if you had access to a panoramic camera like this, what places or spaces would you want to capture? I hope there will be street view imagery of Petra, but I don't see any yet.

26 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Uhmm.. Chernobyl? by Hemi+Rodner · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I want to see Chernobyl please.

    --
    hemi
    1. Re:Uhmm.. Chernobyl? by Mike+Frett · · Score: 2

      I'm not doing anything with my life right now, I'd volunteer. But you're paying for all my expenses -- and Cancer treatments.

    2. Re:Uhmm.. Chernobyl? by kthreadd · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's actually not that bad as long as you stay out of the reactor. They didn't actually cease operation on the power plant until the year 2000.

  2. Chinguetti by vikingpower · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A place I went, a "lost city" in the Sahara

    --
    Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
  3. Pitcairn Islands by dwheeler · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I want to see the Pitcairn Islands. It's notorious hard to get to, and it ensures that the sun never sets on the British empire.

    --
    - David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
    1. Re:Pitcairn Islands by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Pitcairn islands, where the men are men, and their daughters are their wives. No, really. Isolation seems to have fucked them up.

    2. Re:Pitcairn Islands by proverbialcow · · Score: 2

      Link

      --
      The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
  4. What a coincidence... by t4ng* · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I just saw the Google van going down my private road this morning at least a half mile beyond a big sign that says PRIVATE PROPERTY, NO TRESPASSING. This county allows for people to meet trespassers with deadly force. I hope that point that out to anyone using Trekker.

    1. Re:What a coincidence... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You shoot someone just because they are on your property and you'll end up in jail faster than you think. Most states have defense laws against aggressive behavior but if you shoot someone who accidentally wanders into your property and your looking at charges. You have a right to defend yourself and your property not just kill someone because they touched your land.

    2. Re:What a coincidence... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      How about you go fuck yourself you wanna be racist murderer.

      The OP's comment was not racist nor did he threaten to harm anyone.

      The OP merely pointed out that the Google van was trespassing.

      You, on the other hand, are an irrational idiot with severe
      mental health issues.

    3. Re:What a coincidence... by EvilSS · · Score: 2

      I'm confused, is Google it's own race now?

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    4. Re:What a coincidence... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You guys must have been sleeping through the "stand your ground" laws that NRA and gun manufacturing lobbyists have been getting passed in many states.

      Pretty much every state listed here that has "No" in the "Duty to retreat" column allows you to use deadly force against a trespasser that is on your property but still outside your home.

      Before you reply that your life has to be in danger, just remember that dead-men-tell-no-tales. If someone is driving a vehicle on your property, that vehicle could be a deadly weapon against you. In a rural area, where there are rarely any witnesses around, all someone would have to do in states with no duty to retreat is go stand in front of the vehicle and shoot the driver, then tell the police you told them to leave and they tried to run you down. In the absence of any other evidence or witnesses against your story, the police would most likely accept it, especially if the dead person is not a local in your area. It's the wild, wild west in some areas and that's just the way the NRA and gun manufactures wants it to be. City folk ought to take those "No Trespassing" signs out in the country side more seriously.

  5. Simple panoramic camera? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Trekker is operated by an Android device and consists of 15 lenses angled in a different direction so the images can be stitched together into 360-degree panoramic views.

    That's quite neat, but if you want something simpler, wouldn't it be possible to use a single, vertically oriented digital camera with a hyperboloid mirror in front of it, and process the stuff in a computer? The optical system would be axially symmetrical, so the angle in the picture would correspond to the azimuth, and the distance from the center would be a useful function of the elevation (I believe that with the hyperboloid, it should be linear.) You wouldn't get any sort of insanely high resolution in the azimuth but it should still be usable (and much more lightweight, simpler and cheaper).

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
    1. Re:Simple panoramic camera? by hankwang · · Score: 2

      "to use a single, vertically oriented digital camera with a hyperboloid mirror in front of it,"

      Assuming that you mean a camera with a lens looking into the hyperboloid reflector: that would not work because such a mirror would not produce a real or virtual image plane onto which the camera could focus. Parabolic or hyperbolic reflectors can only image a point to another (virtual) point, not a plane to a plane.

      In other words, you get a blurry image; in order to unblur, you would need to know the angular distribution of light intensity on each pixel; if you had such a sensor, you could just as well leave out the lens.

      The blurring might be manageable if the lens is small (like a phone camera) and the reflector is very large (like a meter), but then you'd run into problems with sensor noise and resolution for a 360 degree image and there woild be no gain in portability.

      --
      Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
  6. One of the remotest places on Earth by vikingpower · · Score: 2

    Waw en-Namus, south-western Libya

    --
    Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
  7. Olympic National Forest by darkain · · Score: 2

    A little something right here at home, I would love to take this thing hiking through the trails of the Olympic National Forest. Or really, any of the awesome mountains in the Washington area, like Mt Rainier!

  8. Time and work for free by loufoque · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So essentially Google want people to give some of their time for free in addition of taking ownership of the work they'd be doing?
    I doubt volunteers want to give the IP of their work to Google so that they can monetize it.

    1. Re:Time and work for free by richlv · · Score: 3, Insightful

      this is quite different. the result is free for anybody to use, bundle, improve upon. data somebody would be contributing to gmaps stays there - you can not obtain whole google maps data in vector format and do whatever you please with it.

      this is what openstreetmap offers :)

      --
      Rich
    2. Re:Time and work for free by jklovanc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I doubt volunteers want to give the IP of their work to Google so that they can monetize it.

      You just spent your time to write a comment on Slashdot. That comment could be considered IP. Slashdot then monetizes it through advertising revenue. Did you get paid by Slashdot? You just gave your IP to Slashdot so they can monetize it.

      The reason people will do it is that it is a way of recording the things they saw in much greater detail than ever before so they can show it to their friends. The fact that millions of other people can also see it is just a bonus.

    3. Re:Time and work for free by swillden · · Score: 2

      This is significantly different. Slashdot does not have exclusive rights to redistribute what I write here.

      Exclusive, no, rights, yes. After all, they just redistributed it to me.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  9. Scuba by wheeda · · Score: 2

    I want one for Scuba.

  10. This by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 2

    One question: how much are they going to pay me?

  11. The unseen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hook some flood lights up to that sucker and take it caving.

  12. Google is not a charity by s7uar7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I started using Map Maker when it was released here in the UK a couple of months ago. I stopped when I questioned why I was giving my time, knowledge and expertise to a private company for free.

  13. Or... by proverbialcow · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How about sending along a couple of backpacks (and monetary donations) with vetted charitable aid groups (Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, etc)?

    --
    The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
  14. Kickstarter by heitikender · · Score: 2

    and let people vote with their wallets, where to send guys. Area 51, Mount Everest, neighbours backyard where screams are heard, etc.