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."

Really?

Privacy freaks. ow.

Yeah, those crazy privacy freaks!

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!

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Anyone who describes cars with video camera's on top of them as 'awesome technology' can hardly be expected to understand privacy issues, can they...

Re:Yeah, those crazy privacy freaks!

Are you saying there should be special rules that apply to Google and not to normal photographers?

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No, I don't. I think any person or organisation who photographs everything possible in a city and then publishes them to, say, a publically accessible website without asking the people in the photograph first should come under a similar amount of scrutiny.

Considering there are photos which point inside people's living rooms and are of people on their private property, I think Google should be asking first, not doing it and then providing a mechanism by which someone can have the photo removed after. A photo

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No, I don't. I think any person or organisation who photographs everything possible in a city and then publishes them to, say, a publically accessible website without asking the people in the photograph first should come under a similar amount of scrutiny.

So how many photos exactly am I allowed to take of a city?

And does, say, flickr or panoramio count as an "organization"? If not, what is the essential difference?

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The Greeks were perfectly fine immortalizing themselves as strangely misshapen people with red skin, I don't see why we couldn't get used to requiring public-space photography published without consent of the depicted to have blurred faces.

Remember: the more information people have, the more they can screw you with it. Does your face appear on the sidelines in Stage 13? I guess your boss knows you weren't sick after all. Has a voyeur circulated nude photos of you taking a shower to his friends on the int

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No, there need to be stronger privacy laws all around. However, Google is doing privacy advocates a service by doing it so publicly, and on such a large scale, that it may raise enough awareness to change minds.

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So you don't think photographers should be allowed to take any pictures they want in public spaces?

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So approximately how many photographs am I allowed to take of a city, then?

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It depends. The competing rights are relatively fuzzy. BTW, the right to take pictures of everything in public view does not exist everywhere. The Eiffel tower nighttime illumination is copyrighted, for example. Even though it's there for everyone to see, the French law does not give you the right to photograph it.

Actually, the copyright on the lighting prevents commercial use; photographing for private use is ok.

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Thank goodness no one seems interested in aggregating and geolocating [panoramio.com] all those random photos [geobloggers.com] and combining them [live.com] into a cohesive image. [openphotovr.org]

Yep, if we just shut down Google Street view we'll be guaranteed privacy in any public location, yes-sir.

Seriously, Google Street View is basically useless in terms of "evil government surveillance". Even if we had Star Trek technology capable of identifying any citizen in a country of 300 million from a bad photo, the chances of catching someone in some recognizably suspic

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Anybody who thinks otherwise is a privacy freak!

Exactly so. If your standard of privacy is that high, don't expose yourself to public streets.

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Actually, yes. If those people are in public, or easily visible from a public place.

Or do you think Google should be subjected to anti-photography rules that many people are fighting against for other photographers?

Hey, I'm fast at this....

I can click through stage 1 faster than Alexander Valverde can ride it.

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But Alejandro Valverde, he can beat you.

Le Tour!

I literally finished configuring my MythTV box this morning for it. Now we can find out how many people were on drugs this year.

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This is a bit off-topic, but my friends and I decided that the Tour should declare that the race is so hard that no one can win, and disqualify anyone who looks to be doing too well. They did that last year during the race (including Rasmussen, KlÃden, and Kaschechkin, who were kicked for being suspected of maybe having the opportunity to dope, during the off-season). They did it the year before, too, mostly before the start of the race, on the evidence of a list of names in some doctor's lab. Inclu

Wha?

Scuppered? Seriously?

I guarantee that came from a 'word of the day.'

Have come "a long way", not "along way"

You are talking about distance (even if it is a metaphorical and not physical distance), not whether or not something is with you.

That's nice, the problem is the Tour itself

Let me explain: I am an avid cyclist. Furthermore, I like everything bicycle: I built all my bikes, and I fix and adjust mine and my friends bikes.

And I can't stand Le Tour de France or Il Giro d'Italia. I hate the doping (and everything they do to hide it) and how massively it is happening. The commercializaition of these cycling events is disturbing for sure, but I am willing to accept it as a necessary evil. After all, these events have been commercialized long before even the heroic days of Binda, Coppi and Bartali. But what's going on is just bullshitting.

I don't follow these cycling events animore. I may check some of the track cycling GP competitions (less bulshitting, and it lasts a few days instead of weeks and weeks).

Any fellow slashdotter who actually follows the tour/giro?

Let them do drugs!

Then we can bet on who has the best doctor !

Typo

"it's awesome Street View technology" --> "its awesome Street View technology"

Fuck Google and the ground they stand on

I am having a Franz Kafka problem with Google. My wife (the worlds worst technophobe) lost the password to her blog. Today I discovered that the alternate email address for the account is not only an deliverable address it's an invalid domain altogether.

Google does not have a provision to fix this. The reset password either goes to the address for which I need the password, or, it goes to an undeliverable address. And every 'form' they have for every single problem on Blogger goes to the same submission form.

But here's the good part. To protect my privacy - Google's official response is to say in effect "We don't believe you, we think you're lying and so we won't and can't help you."

And there appears to be no recourse. No place to send an email no place to explain even in one sentence what this problem is.

So fuck Google and the Chinese Death Squads that use them. Fuck them all.

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I wouldn't call it dull per se, but something is up when not a single person from a country outside Western Europe and the US has ever won the thing....