The Week

"Obviously my intention is to expose you. Enjoying your work though"
Robert Loch

I write from Hyde Park where, having now posted my work for today, I can relax after a very amusing week.

A few interesting tech things happened.

• Yahoo is taking its DRM servers off line. So anyone with Yahoo music is basically stuffed. Hard luck suckas!


• Twitter got hacked (allegedly). Anyone who was logged on at the time lost their followers. It's likely you also contracted a few viruses - run your anti-virus!


• Actually a few million sites got hacked, as did a few Oyster cards!


• Savvy Chavvy won a Catalyst award. Not sure how the recipient collected the award with a chicken drumstick in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.


• A businessman managed to sue his old mate for putting up a fake Facebook profile. Boy could I be in trouble!


• ...And finally Google pulled out of the Digg acquisition.

The latter deservingly wins today's haiku dedication as follows:

Digg's big deal goes west
No Google acquisition
Boardroom tears for sure

I've recently been busy messing around with the London web community and have lots more messing planned. Very much enjoyed a game of Botticelli over email with Detective Inspector Loch last night. I was even tempted to include him in my conspiracy but then I might as have well given him a loudspeaker with my name blaring out of it.

Enough for now and remember George is watching you. Spread the word!

Back to my sunbathing.

Street View fun

"If we had 3 million exhibitionists and only one voyeur, nobody could make any money"
Albert Brooks


As lightning always strikes twice, so, it seems, does the Google Street View Car. Thankfully, partly due to the many European privacy organisations along with the Daily Mail, my face is likely to be blurred out. Phew!

Both sightings were in the West End of London last week and each time the car was blasting out loud music, unintentionally (or perhaps not), confusing some people to its actual purpose. Even my first thoughts were that it was some kind of roadshow or festival promotion, the tall boxes sticking out the roof being speakers rather than cameras.

It didn't take long to realise my mistake after noticing the very clear branding on the car, most likely a legal necessity. And, on further research I notice that this last week shows the biggest increase in sightings of the car in the UK including:

girlonetrack: Just bombed it down my road in sandals to catch up with the Google camera car so I could take a snap of it. I failed.

ajhicks: Just went past a google streetview camera car in shoreditch.wonder how long it'l be before its available to use

...and my favourite

danux: thinks if the google car came to Tyseley it would probably get its camera nicked

What is Street View? It's a new service from Google Maps that gives you a 360 degree view of any where the camera has been: you can find a street and walk down it. I tried to have a bit of fun with it and walk the wrong way up some freeways - wasn't actually much fun in the end. So I tried to cross the freeway and walk into a lake. Unfortunately, this wasn't possible as you can only follow the exact line the camera car took. Darn! But theoretically this could follow. If Google can use similar technology to Microsoft's Photosynth then anything could be possible. Anyway back to the sightings.

It appears the UK and Germany had the most recent sightings suggesting that, privacy issues permitting, London will have its very own Street View very soon. Although it could just be that we had more hours of sunshine than normal this week, essential for the cameras to work at their optimum.

Americans have been having lots of fun with the service. People flashing at the camera, and the spotting of incidents including various crimes, accidents, nose pickings and just plain weird moments. A number of websites have emerged capturing some of the better voyeuristic moments - Street View Fun.com and Google Street View Sightings.

But it's not all been fun. Some people caught on camera have not been too pleased. One disgruntled couple believe that their house price has gone down as a result and are attempting to sue Google for $22,000. This amount also includes costs for mental suffering. Last month, the Pentagon banned Google from making close-up images of military bases after it was revealed that pictures of the Fort Sam Houston army base in Texas included access control points and other potentially risky details.

The images are made from 16 static shots combined to give the 360 degree view and the guys behind the technology have not ruled out the possibility of live streaming in the future.

Keep tweeting those sightings and let’s see if we British can have more fun with them than our American counterparts.

Aren't we a sad bunch!