GOOGLE LAUNCHES STREET VIEW APP WITH 360-DEGREE IMAGES

Original Story: latimes.com

Google is retiring its Photo Sphere Camera app on iOS and the Street View feature from the Google Maps app on Android in favor of a new app for both operating systems: the Street View app.

The tech giant announced Thursday the standalone app will let people explore collections of 360-degree panorama photos of locations (both interior and exterior), and make their own contributions to public photo galleries.

Users can snap 360-degree “spherical” photos directly from their Android phone or iPhone, or use a dedicated 360-degree camera such as the Ricoh Theta S or NCTech iris360. They can then geotag the images and upload them directly to Google Maps. Other users can then view those images when they tap on a map location within the app.

“In one gallery, you can explore Street View collections and content from Google Maps alongside photo spheres contributed from people around the globe,” said a product manager at Google Maps, Charles Armstrong. “So whether you want to track the Loch Ness monster in Scotland, scale the famed rock wall El Capitan in Yosemite, or hike Mt. Fuji, the Street View app has you covered.”

To combat inappropriate content that often goes hand-in-hand with user-generated content, the app will have a feature that lets users report problems.

WOMAN, HIT BY CAR, SUES GOOGLE FOR FAULTY DIRECTIONS

Original Story: cnet.com

Why trust the machines when you can trust your own eyes, your own brain, your own basic sense of survival?

This philosophical question comes to mind after reading the tragic tale of a woman, her eyes, her brain, her BlackBerry, and her Google Maps.

According to an exhaustive analysis presented by Search Engine Land, Lauren Rosenberg decided to take a walk in Park City, Utah, on January 19, 2009. A Detroit personal injury lawyer is reviewing the details of this case.

I will try and ignore just how fundamentally un-American this act was in order to focus on some of the ensuing action.

Rosenberg fingered her trusted BlackBerry and asked it to tell her just how she might walk between 96 Daly Avenue and 1710 Prospector Avenue. Her BlackBerry turned to the world's great walking resource, Google Maps. Google Maps suggested that she should, as part of her journey, amble along Deer Valley Drive.

For all of you who have not had the pleasure of strolling there, might I quote papers filed by Rosenberg's lawyers with the Utah courts. These papers describe Deer Valley Drive as "a.k.a. State Route 224, a rural highway with no sidewalks, and a roadway that exhibits motor vehicles traveling at high speeds, that is not reasonably safe for pedestrians."

There is perhaps nothing finer than a roadway that bothers to exhibit motor vehicles. Yet this was not quite the exhibition that Rosenberg had in mind. For during her stroll along State Route 224 aka Deer Valley Drive she was allegedly struck by a car driven by Patrick Harwood. A Chicago personal injury lawyer represents clients in personal injury, accident, an negligence cases.

She's suing Harwood. And she is also suing Google.

Perhaps some of you might think of Rosenberg as just a perambulating chaser. Yet she and her lawyers reason that Google's walking directions were "careless, reckless, and negligent providing of unsafe directions."

Now this is the point at which your complex minds become engaged and my rather simpler version becomes divorced. You see, if you ask Google Maps for walking directions on your laptop you get a very clear warning--yes, on one of those lovely beigey-yellow backgrounds--that reads: "Walking Direction are in Beta. Use caution--This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths."

The question is, does this warning appear when you go to Google Maps on your BlackBerry? Or, even more importantly, on Rosenberg's BlackBerry? It does not appear to appear on the iPhone. Which might suggest the same situation holds with the RIM phone.

What I cannot ascertain from the court papers is why Rosenberg would want to walk this route in Utah. She is, it appears, from Los Angeles, which means that she might not have been used to walking at all.

Equally puzzling is the first part part of the court papers where it is says that Rosenberg suffered mental, physical and emotional injuries that caused her to incur medical expenses "in an amount yet to be determined." And yet when it comes to the part about suing Google, medical expenses are said to exceed $100,000. A Grand Rapids personal injury attorney is following this story closely.

Courts have not always been sympathetic to those who claim that they were merely following the orders of enlightened machines. There was the man in England who ordered his BMW down an unpaved cliffside lane , got stuck, and then claimed that his GPS made him do it. The court decided it was the driver's own brain that made him do so.

Can Rosenberg expect Utah courts to be more sympathetic? In our world of increasingly diminished responsibility, might someone actually be in a position to prove that we are all now subjects of the Googleplex? Those Googlies have filmed our streets, made records of our Wi-Fi data, followed us around the Web until they could offer us ads that are "good" for us. Shouldn't we admit whose the supreme power truly is?

Or might the judge emit a cough and declaim in the finest Latin: "Caveat walker"?

Mistaken Identitiy Causing Personal Grief in Google Maps Case

LA Times

Santa Monica woman takes the heat over Google lawsuit

An L.A. County woman sues the search engine giant over directions that allegedly led to her being struck by a car. But another woman, also named Lauren Rosenberg, bears the brunt of public abuse.

Last week, a Los Angeles County woman named Lauren Rosenberg sued Google in federal court for damages, alleging it was responsible for her being hit by a car. Rosenberg — who also sued the driver who hit her — said the search engine giant was "careless, reckless, and negligent" in supplying her with walking directions in Park City, Utah, last year that led her onto a rural state highway with no sidewalks.

And this week, Lauren Rosenberg of Santa Monica got bombarded with the public reaction. Strangers left tart phone messages and withering e-mails lambasting her for suing Google.

The problem is — they found the wrong Lauren Rosenberg. This Lauren Rosenberg owns a public relations company, did not sue Google over bad directions, and says she's confident she wouldn't have followed those directions anyway. ("Just because Google says to walk on a highway, you don't walk on a highway.")

What she's struggling to cope with is the fallout mistakenly directed her way. "The first one I received was an e-mail from a friend saying, 'Gee, I thought you were smarter than that,' " Rosenberg said.That's when Rosenberg discovered that someone who shared her name had sued Google. "I replied, 'I swear I'm smarter than that.' Smiley face."

At least her friends are funny — or worried. ("Not you, I hope?" e-mailed one friend with a link to a story on the plaintiff Rosenberg.)

Strangers, however, have been scathing.

"They all tell me I'm stupid and how dare I sue Google, take some responsibility for your own actions," Rosenberg said. "At first I thought it was funny. I just cracked up. Ha, ha, ha. Then today when I got more, I thought this could be a problem."

She has posted something on her blog headlined "A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY" that alerts the public that she is not the same Lauren Rosenberg. "Can you say 'damage control'?" she concludes.

The attorney representing the "other" Rosenberg — the one who really is suing Google — did not return a phone message.

Pedestrian Sues Google for Bad Directions

Daily Mail

Deer Valley Drive as seen in Google Street View, without a pedestrian in sight

 

 

A woman is suing Google, the search engine, claiming its maps function gave her walking directions that led her on to a major highway, where she was hit by a car.

The lawsuit seeks more than $100,000 (£70,000) in damages.

Lauren Rosenberg used Google Maps on January 19, 2009, via her Blackberry, to get directions between 96 Daly Street, Park City, Utah, and 1710 Prospector Avenue, Park City, Utah.

Google provided these, telling her as part of the route to walk for about half a mile along the calm-sounding Deer Valley Drive.

But Deer Valley Drive is a section of Utah State Route 224, a busy rural highway without pavements. One stretch is blocked by a noise barrier that pushes pedestrians closer to the roadside.

And Rosenberg wasn’t warned about this, putting Google directly at fault in the accident, the case claims.

After walking on to the highway, Rosenberg was struck by a car. The driver, Patrick Harwood, is also named in the suit.

The case, Rosenberg v Harwood, was filed in Utah, in the U.S. District Court’s Central. Both Harwood and Google are being sued in the same case, for damages ‘in excess of $100,000’.

Google has pointed out that the directions Rosenberg sought come with a warning of caution for pedestrians.

But Rosenberg claims that she accessed the Maps function on her Blackberry mobile device, which only has a small screen, so does not include the warning.

Others have pointed out that Rosenberg might have been best served by her own eyes after she reached a T-junction and found herself confronted with an obviously unsafe walk.

Microsoft's Bing has a similar warning when mapping the same path: ‘Caution, this route may be missing sidewalks or other pedestrian paths.’

The problem is that you only get 320x480 pixels on a Blackberry screen and if Google needed to put warnings on its Maps pages, there'd hardly be any room for a map.

Instead, Google has to rely on people using common sense and lessons they learned at school – at least until their maps become 'fool proof'.

Google Gets Bike Friendly

The Chicago Tribune

Map feature adding routes and trips for cyclists in Chicago and 149 other cities

 

The world's most popular Internet search engine is getting more bicycle-friendly.

On Wednesday, Google will unveil a service offering bicycling directions on its Google Maps feature.

Hard-core and recreational cyclists will be able to use the Web-based technology to plan trips or explore biking trails and routes in Chicago and 149 other U.S. cities, Google officials said.

Several online bike-trip sites already exist. But bicycling advocates hope Google's entrance in the market benefits not only individual riders but Chicago's transit system as a whole. One goal is to make it easier for non- or infrequent cyclists to access the service, thereby promoting more bicycling.

The Web address for the service is maps.google.com/biking.

After typing in start and end points and selecting "Bicycling'' on the drop-down menu, a user will be provided with itineraries and estimated travel times, although trip times undoubtedly will vary depending on the pedaling power of the individual.

But to allow for such variations, the step-by-step biking directions factor in the length of the trip, changes in elevation and even fatigue, Google officials said.

Until now, Google Maps was limited to helping drivers and mass-transit users navigate their way around. The new trip-planning software for cyclists will be especially useful in Chicago, which has more than 200 miles of bikeways, including dedicated on-street bike lanes and marked shared lanes.

"This is the next move in what we think mapmaking should be,'' said Jim Lecinski, managing director for Google in the U.S. and former head of Google's operations in Chicago and the Midwest. "Streets are not just for cars.''

Currently, Chicago closes off Lake Shore Drive to vehicles one day a year so cyclists can own the road for a few hours, and the city devotes an entire month to promote and celebrate bicycling. Could Google's new venture mean more commuters may soon start wearing Spandex shorts while traveling to work?

Bicycling advocates think so. While Google isn't the first company to offer online trip planning for alternative forms of transportation, including walking, it is the largest.

Avid bicyclist Kevin Conway said he is eager to give Google a spin to see whether it's better than its competitors. Conway has a couple of bike-trip planning sites bookmarked on his computer, but he doesn't find them particularly useful.

"There are a couple of bad ones out there,'' said Conway, 50, an attorney who biked to work downtown from his home in the Wicker Park neighborhood 230 days last year and who hasn't missed a day so far this year.

"A lot of the sites are less sophisticated about choosing more bike-friendly routes versus the shortest distance between two points,'' he said.

While withholding judgment until he's tried the new service, he is especially looking forward to Google's promise of providing turn-by-turn directions, he said.

The Google bike-trip planner will not immediately be available on cell phones and other wireless devices, but company officials said they are working on a mobile application so that cyclists can look up directions while on their bikes.

Google Maps' new software program includes recommended cycling routes for specific point-to-point travel and maps that show bike trails, on-street bike lanes and bike-friendly roads.

Bicyclists can also use other features in Google Maps, including Street View, to receive turn-by-turn directions or preview the width of a bike lane, company officials said.

Another feature, Local Search, guides cyclists to locations where they can take a break or find bike shops along the route.

The biking directions provide time estimates for routes based on an algorithm that takes into account the length of the route, the number of hills, fatigue over time, and other variables, Google officials said.

Other existing trip-planning services for bicyclists include ridethecity.com and mapmyride.com.

But bicycling advocates say Google's entry will be a game-changer because it will reach the masses, including anybody at a computer who enters "bike'' into a Google search.

"Google is already a tool that people use every day,'' said Margo O'Hara, a spokeswoman for the Active Transportation Alliance. "To expand the choices where people are already looking for directions will make more people think about getting around by bike and show them how quickly they can do it in a bike-friendly city.''

Google Now Needs ATV's For Street View

Story from Mercury News

Mountain View Internet juggernaut Google is using a camera-equipped tricycle to photograph off-road locations for its Street View service, and it's asking for nominations of places the Street View trike should visit.

"Some of the country's most interesting and fun places aren't accessible with our Street View car," Google senior mechanical engineer Dan Ratner explained today on the company's official blog.

Google engineer Dan Ratner rides on the Street View 

trike at Shoreline Park in Mountain View.

"My day job is working as a mechanical engineer on the Street View team, but I do a lot of mountain biking in my spare time," Ratner continued. "One day, while exploring some roads less traveled, I realized that I could combine these two pursuits and build a bicycle-based camera system for Street View."

Google already has photographed California sites including the Monterey Bay Bike Trail, the Santa Monica Pier and the San Diego State University campus to improve Google SEO for maps.

The company is accepting suggestions until Oct. 28 at www.google.com/trike for other U.S. locations to photograph — including parks and trails, university campuses, pedestrian malls, theme parks and zoos, landmarks and sports venues.

Google said it will need to work with property owners to use the Street View trike to photograph privately owned or operated locations.

Google Tricycle Snaps Views From Philly Campus
Story from Detroit News

A pedicab-like vehicle mounted with an 8-foot-high camera has been rolling around the pedestrian walkways of the University of Pennsylvania to collect panoramic images of the campus for Google Maps' Street View feature, which gives users detailed, street-level views of map locations over the Internet.

Google Inc. has been using car-mounted cameras to prowl streets in the U.S. and around the world. The human-powered version allows coverage of pedestrian-only areas on campuses, in public parks and at theme parks, as well as along hiking and bicycling trails, as Google seeks to expand coverage of its maps.

The effort comes as Google faces complaints from many individuals and institutions that have been photographed around the world. Since launching in 2007, Street View has expanded to more than 100 cities worldwide.

Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of the industry news site Search Engine Land, called the new effort a good public relations move by Google.

"This is a nice way for them to say 'Hey, look, Street View: It's really warm and fuzzy,'" he said. "It's not just about taking pictures of people's houses. We can find these footpaths that people want to go on and walking areas, places people will like."

Officials say the photos of Penn's tree-lined Locust Walk mall and other places will allow prospective students and their parents to get a good feel for the campus, give incoming students a way to map out the best route to their classes -- and let alumni fondly remember their school days.

"We see this as an opportunity ... for people to see as much of Penn as possible from their computer," said Marie Witt, University of Pennsylvania vice president for business services. "Students can show their parents where they're living, where the student union is, where their favorite classroom building is."

The 250-pound vehicle, which resembles the pedicabs that carry tourists around Philadelphia and other cities, has the cyclist pumping the pedals up front, with the camera mounted on a tower in the back. On the rear is a red generator along with a large white chest that looks like it might dispense ice cream but actually contains the computer recording the digital images.

On Friday, the tricycle trundled through the Ivy League school quads enclosed by student housing buildings, along campus footpaths and Philadelphia apartments, drawing stares from students and employees.

"I think it's fantastic," said Caitlin Hanrahan, 28, a nursing student. "This campus is really confusing ... and when you try and explain to people how to get to the building, people get lost all the time. I think something like that, where you can see a picture of it and what you have to walk through to get there, would actually be really helpful.

Lyndsey Hauck, 25, eating Chinese takeout on a bench in front of a green campus pond, dove for her cell phone to grab a picture as the tricycle apparatus swooped by, ignored by ducks and turtles even after it got stuck on the path and needed a slight push.

"Pretty cool -- always kind of interested in how they've done it, so now we know," said her companion, Cody Strohl, 29, also a Penn employee.

The tricycle has also been cruising around other colleges and universities, including Penn State, San Diego State and the University of San Diego, Google spokesman Sean Carlson said.

It has also been seen cruising past Rome's Trevi fountain, at Santa Monica's Third Street promenade and pier and along a Monterey, Calif. bicycle trail. Soon, views will be featured from along walkways of theme parks such as Legoland near Carlsbad, Calif., Carlson said.

In other countries, privacy concerns have been raised about the images.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google this week acceded to German demands to erase the raw footage of faces, house numbers, license plates and individuals who have told authorities they do not want their information used in the service.

Last month, Greek officials rejected a bid to photograph the nation's streets until more privacy safeguards are provided. In April, residents of one English village formed a human chain to stop a camera van, and in Japan the company agreed to reshoot views taken by a camera high enough to peer over fences.

Witt said university officials escorting the Google teams around campus were working to make sure privacy concerns were addressed. The company says faces and license plates will be blurred, and anyone can quickly flag for removal images they consider inappropriate by clicking a box on the bottom of each page.

One of the tricycle operators, Martin D.F. Angelo, 27, said the camera occasionally gets a leery reaction from older people but seems universally embraced by the young.

"The biggest disappointment that most people seem to voice is that we're actually going to blur out their faces," he said, "so they're not going to be Internet-famous or something like that."