I read an article during the week about a letter of support for Net Neutrality from some of the biggest, and most well-known, Internet based companies in the world. The article is Big names support net neutrality, and it lists the following supporters:
The letter, signed by the chief executives of Google, Ebay, Skype, Facebook, Amazon and Sony Electronics among others, says that maintaining data neutrality helps businesses to compete on the basis of content alone.
And…
Other signatories included community websites Digg, Flickr, LinkedIn and Craigslist.
This list of companies does not really surprise me, as they probably have the most to gain from Net Neutrality. Conversely, it is probably the telcos who have the most to loose!
Tags: Amazon, Craigslist, Digg, eBay, Facebook, Flickr, Google, LinkedIn, Net Neutrality, Skype, Sony
I think that Google Maps is really powerful, and I love reading about, and viewing, some of its more interesting aspects (for example the high-resolution photos of a well in Chad).
I also think that Google Street View is a great extension to Google Maps, and the user interface (including Pegman) makes it really easy to use.
It is great to see that more cities in the EU are becoming available. The Spanish cities of Barcelona (or should this be the Catalan city), Madrid, Seville, and Valencia were recently added according to Spanish cities surrender to Street View. Google records the information using slightly modified cars, as seen in the Flickr group pool Google Street View Cars.
As Google Street View becomes more popular it is inevitable that people will be recorded doing unusual things. There were a few examples recently of unusual recordings that caught my attention. The system should automatically blur faces, but it does not always work.
- There was a lady in Madrid who needed to go to the toilet while on the street! Google has removed the close-up image of her from the system, so there is no longer a photo for the scene of the incident. However, you can still see her head from slightly further along the street. You can read more about this, and see the original photo, in Google scrubs urinating woman from Street View.
- Other people choose to make the most of their moments in the eye of the camera, such as a girl from Chicago who decided to flash her breasts. Her image has also been removed, but you can see her by moving along the street. You can see the original image, and read more about the incident, in Girl Flashes Chest at Street View Car.
- A girl, who was recently kidnapped by her grandmother, was located by the police with the help of Google Street view. You can read more about this in Google’s Street View Takes A Byte Out Of Crime or ‘Kidnapped’ child tracked by mobile phone and Street View.
I noticed while writing all of this there there is a new Google icon. It appears that I am not the only person who noticed this according to Google Gets A New Favicon, Again. It’s Uh.. Colorful.
For more information about Google Maps and Street View see the official Google Lat Long Blog.
Tags: Flickr, Google, Spain
