US town tells Street View to push off Google has removed a private Minnesota community from its Street View feature after the town politely asked the search monolith to keep its roving spycars to itself. North Oaks, north east of Minneapolis, boasts a "unique situation", the Minnesota Star Tribune reports, in that its roads are owned by the residents and it " …
That E-W CR96 street is clearly available (from the other carrigeway):
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=north+oaks+minnesota&ie=UTF8&layer=c&cbll=45.07925,-93.10653&panoid=TMw39w4QPrmeEWvI2vVySw&cbp=1,96.4786315666637,,0,5.167728857364421&t=h&ll=45.080574,-93.106298&spn=0.005326,0.009999&z=17
Perhaps it was the northern Pleasant lake road that was removed:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=north+oaks+minnesota&ie=UTF8&layer=c&cbll=45.079423,-93.106449&panoid=b-xq72Vj5gX5rT2mg-lCJQ&cbp=1,28.791630906166403,,0,5&t=h&ll=45.080748,-93.106213&spn=0.005326,0.009999&z=17
I have a different take here.
Usually city streets are considered public domain.
Often private communities have private roads, but that's usually limited to local housing communities, and the communities in this case are resonsible for all upkeep of the roads, with no city/state money/involvement, and then it becomes something the City Council would not have any jurisdiction over. Basically, it becomes a shared driveway.
From the way the article was written, it makes it sound as if all the city streets are private. I don't see how this is workable. If this is managed by the city, and they are involved with planning/managing/collecting fees/scheduling maintenance or patrolling the roads, then these monies become "taxes" and the roads are now public.
If that's the case that all the roads are private, could anyone entering the city without an invitation be charged with trespassing? Sure fire way to deal with any problem element, I guess, but I'm not sure it would hold up in court if a real challenge was put to it.
Glad the town doesn't think it's "hoity-toity".
Paris, 'cause she knows what it's like to have private photos on the 'net.
North Oaks does have notices posted at all the entrance points to the area indicating private property, private roads, no tresspassing, no soliciting, etc. And they do enforce their right to restrict access to the area by ticketing people cutting through the area (popular alternate route due to construction in the area), and people soliciting door to door.
Why should people have to access Google repeatedly in order to ensure that their private information is, in fact, private? Opt-out models suck.
I realize the UK is used to having cameras on every street corner and having their every move watched (one of the many reasons I left) but other countries, who take privacy somewhat more seriously, aren't at that stage and possibly will never be.
What google is doing is really cool from a tech perspective, but it does raise some very serious issues with privacy. At the very least, Google should have made more effort to remove people from its pictures. There are many good reasons for people to not want their pictures published in a public location, from abusive ex's to witness protection programs to none-of-anyone-elses-business "I was here".
As a frequent visitor yet outsider of North Oaks, This isn't surprising. I will back the mayor in saying most of the people are not "hoity toity". Some yes, most naught. They have a long record of running a tight ship. They are private roads in that the housing association, not the city, owns the land and paved the roads to begin with. IMO, who cares. There is nothing in north oaks besides houses anyway, all shopping centers on on the edge, and most of those are annexed land to nieghboring cities. So the only reason you would be there, is if you lived there, or were visiting some friends.
Take a look at "Billionaires' Row" (the place where obama belittled Americans behind closed doors...) in San Francisco. There are a lot of gaps in the street views that just can't be explained other than "money talks."
They get the pics from traffic cam. There are plenty of areas in San Jose that have gaps. These are not in the rich section..
Well one point could be directions. Direction websites have been around for a long time but it makes it all that easier if there is a photo of the alley that you need to turn down, or a picture of the building.
Extend this to GPS and rather than having just the normal 3D view you have a photo realistic view.
Then, you want to buy a house in the neighbourhood. You can visit it virtually first.
There are plenty of applications for it and every time you use it Google can show you some ads for businesses also in the area.
Emergence.
One of the things that is interesting about Google is that it provides this for free. It takes us closer to the enhanced reality where a locational cross-reference can trigger relevant searches or events. User uploaded comments and content, traditional queries into the Google indexes, and immersive photoreality can combine very quickly to be much more than the sum of the parts. It may seem ho-hum now, but combine all this with a compass in a handheld device, and suddenly you have something very interesting...X-Ray vision from the other side of a wall or building anyone? What about a pair of goggles with directional location sensing? Think about this for military or emergency services. Hell, think about gaming using the real world as a map! Virtual tourism. All this is static, but it is not a quantum leap in technology to provide more real time immersion if the feeds were fast enough.
For more on this sort of thing, look at where Photosynth and Sea Dragon are. I think the way I found this was originally an article here on El Reg. You are looking for the TIM podcast. Visit the Microsoft website for an online demo.
Expect a less page oriented future in other words, and more immersive applications of this technology.
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