Street view is a Google feature which puts the individual at the street level by giving them the impression of being there.;xNLx;;xNLx;Google Street View was launched in 2007. Immersive Media technology is behind the images captured by Street View, which uses an 11-lens camera that takes photos in 11 directions.;xNLx; ;xNLx;
In 1906, Earl Miles was the filmmaker who captured images in the San Francisco area by attaching his camera to a trolley and filming from the mid-Market Street down to the Ferry Building (Weber, 2012). The images are only available because they were shipped to New York before The Great San Francisco earthquake, which devastated the area, including Earl Mile's shop. Looking at this data, we realize that at that time people already wanted the audience to experience being in the video captured, as if they were living that specific moment. This "close to reality" moments have been pursued since then.
In 1907 it was already possible to find a type of "Street View" map type of technology. They were a type of guide which instructed drivers through visual media, resembling the current Street View (Glow, 2007). The Photo Auto-Maps were instructional pictures that put people on the scene, making it easier for directions to be seen. The Photo Auto-maps were released by Rand McNally.
The Aspen Movie Map started in the MIT, with the aims of familiarizing soldiers with new territory. It was created by Michael Naimark, Peter Clay and Bob Mohl, under the supervision of professor Andrew Lippman at MIT’s Architecture Machine Group. The Aspen Movie Map was an interactive video that also put the viewer in the scene. Movie map is controlled by computer and video-disc-based system that shows two representations of virtual environments, map and travel land (Mohl, 1971). To see real images of the location, the user uses the travel land mode and is able to control speed, directions, route selection, and the user can also see pictures of building facades and access location data, whereas in map land the viewer sees aerial images, being able to move his view point choosing between map and photo (Mohl, 1971). In 1988, fish-eye images were added which allowed the users to have 360-degree panoramic views (Young, 2010). Movie map is also known as surrogate travel.
In 1998 the birth of a huge company happened. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Stanford University colleagues started a partnership and created the most used search-engine in the world: Google (Lavoie, 2008). The picture shows Google's first logo in 1998. Google will be responsible for great mapping tools like Google Earth, Google Maps and Street View.
The Stanford CityBlock Project started with Google co-founder, Larry Page. Using a camcorder, he filmed some building facades around the Bay Area in California. Taking into consideration that this type of street-level images contained a lot of information, he was inspired by Google's mission, which is to organize information and make it accessible to everyone (Anguelov et al., 2010). Page asked his team to find out a way to condense the footage he had gotten using only some images, and in order to solve this challenge they used 'multi-perspective panoramas'. To develop this idea more in depth, the team asked for funding and in November 2002 they got it from Google and Stanford University. In June 2006 this project was over and its technology was incorporated into Street View. The picture shows what a multi-perspective panorama is (Garg et al., 2013). During the CityBlock project, different types of cars and vehicles were equipped with cameras, lasers, GPS and computers to get as many images as necessary for all the steps of the project. Three phases of vehicles were used during the project, in order to accommodate the needs of the project and quality of images they needed (Anguelov et al., 2010).
Immersive Media Company launched the first 360˚ full digital camera system. It is a camera that has 11 lens, and takes photos in 11 directions, being able to capture 30 frames per second of high-resolution photography. This is the technology behind Google Street View.
On October 2004, Google acquires a digital mapping company called Keyhole. In June 2005 Google Earth is announced. This satellite imagery-based-mapping service allows people to travel virtually to any place around the world. In 2005 Google Maps is launched and satellite images are added to it. In April it is released in Europe to reach UK users and in 2006 other European countries receive the technology: Germany, Italy, France, Italy and Spain. Today the technology is present in more than 190 countries. In February 2007, more traffic images are added in more than 30 cities throughout the world. Live traffic data is currently available in more than 50 countries. Privacy issues started becoming a concern as the Internet technologies improve and become available worldwide.
Street view is a feature which puts the individual at the street level. It uses 360-degree street-level imagery. It was possible due to the technology developed by a company called Immersive Media, founded in 1994. The technology uses 360 degree images. Street View is incorporated to Google Maps in the American cities of New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver. Currently Street View is available in more than 50 countries. By 2010 Street View could be explored in the 7 continents, including Brazil, Antarctica and Ireland.
Privacy is a very serious issue with the advent of the Internet. Google made available a video in which Stephen Chau, Google Street View's product manager, talks about privacy settings. If an individual sees something he or she may find inappropriate, a report can be filed. Measures are necessary to protect users based on the Human Rights. As stated by Banisar and Davies (1999): "Privacy is a fundamental human right recognized in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convenant on Civil and Political Rights and in many other international and regional treaties. Privacy underpins human dignity and other key values such as freedom of association and freedom of speech. It has become one of the most important human rights issues of the modern age." Private Issues start to become essential on Street View, specially because of the law demands in different countries. The Google team begins to realize the complexity of having people exposed on a website.
Due to complaints about privacy, the Street View Google team developed a cutting-edge face and license plate blurring technology, protecting people from the web exposition. The technology is capable of detecting 98-99% of faces and plates and blurs them.
An article published on the Gattysburg Times covered the case of a couple from Pittsburgh, Aaron and Christine Boring, who sued Google for showing their property on Street View. They claimed invasion of privacy, mental suffering and devaluation of their home. They claimed the pictures were taken on a private land. Google appealed claiming that complete privacy does not exist (Lavoie, 2008). The court dismissed all the claims except for the invasion of privacy. The author, John Messeder (2008) states that in this case, the couple's house was on the internet on the Allegheny County's Office of Property Assessment website and could have been accessed by anybody. Another difficult issue for Google is to deal with so many different laws worldwide. In Switzerland, for instance, the court demanded 100% of anonymity in the pictures and that it has to be done by hand on the ones the program fails to detect. Google's technology blurs about 98-99% of faces and license plates and blurring it by hand would be costly. The court accepted the percentage for the blurring but ordered Google to lower the cameras in the cars, blur sensitive facilities and announce to the communities when they capture images. In Germany, before Street View was released, Google asked people to contact them if they did not want them to show their properties, and as a result, an impressive amount of more than 250,000 people filled in the request. Dealing with technologies and people always pose some challenges, which will have to be further addressed when necessary.
Google Earth and Google Maps are considered educational tools as well. Using Google Maps people can collaboratively, create their own maps. Google Earth technology brought to people the real truth about deforestation, for example. It is possible to see videos showing what has been happening in the Amazon and other places around the globe. The government denies what happens, but the technology is there to show us what is in fact occurring . This is a great advance in technology, and country leaders can not omit the truth anymore. It is becoming a great tool for the population, and as technology improves it could even play in favor of the population.
Google has a range of possibilities in Education as well. It is a tool that can be used inside the classroom by teachers to explore the world virtually. The Google Cultural Institute,a virtual museum, offers viewers a variety of artifacts from many partners. There is the World Wonders Project, which allows the public to explore the modern and ancient world. The Art Project is also a fascinating collection of the world's art work. As technology improves the possibilities become more infinite. We can bring the world and knowledge to people who do not have the means of travelling but would appreciate exploring more of the world.
Hyperlapse is the junction of timelapse with videos that add camera movement. Basically you can choose two points in Google Maps and the hyperlapse video will be created. A company called Teehan + Lex Labs has developed a tool that creates interactive hyperlapse videos using Google Street View, generating amazing movies. An example is also the short stop motion video made using Street View as well.
At the same time that GPS technologies improve and apparently make our lives easier, controversy instills. The article 'Do our brains pay a price for GPS?', posted online on the Boston Globe discussed how negative these technologies can actually be for us. We rely and depend so much on them, that when we do not have the device, we can not get to the same place we had been to so many times before. According to Leon Neyfakh (2013), research has proven that the more the GPS is used, the less we remember about the places we go. He actually states that overusing it is bad for us. According to him, mental maps are very important and they allow you to be more flexible when driving, being able to think fast about the routes and make connections. Neyfakh (2013) tells about an experiment carried out at University of Nottingham in England where a simulator was used to test people's knowledge on four routes. Half of the people were guided by a device and the other half used a regular paper map. The results showed that the ones who followed the instructions given by the device did worse than the ones who used the paper maps and they also failed to recognize places and roads they had been twice. His article made me think about all these young generation that have maps even on their phone devices. When I think about myself 10 years ago, I remember being able to go anywhere without a GPS. I would ask people around and memorize the route and I would't get lost often. Nowadays with the GPS technology even on our phones, I always rely on it and often get lost and double the time to go somewhere, failing to even remember my mistakes if I have to go back to the same place. People are losing track of their own environment, according to John Huth, a physicist at Harvard who wrote the book "The Lost Art of Finding Our Way" (Neyfakh, 2013).
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