maps

Google's Street View service didn't invade a Pittsburgh couple's privacy, the search giant said in a response to the couple's April lawsuit over the matter.

"Plaintiffs' privacy claims fail, among other reasons, because the view of a home from the driveway that can be seen by any visitor, delivery person, or telephone repairman is not private," the company said in response to the suit, according to a copy posted at The Smoking Gun. Google seeks to dismiss the claim in its filing.

"Today's satellite-image technology means that...complete privacy does not exist,&… Read more

An unlikely drama is playing out in, of all places, the security research field. Researcher Dan Kaminsky says that earlier this year, he discovered a serious flaw in the Domain Name System that drives the Internet. He's spent the last few months coordinating a huge project to get the flaw patched by all necessary companies before disclosing details about the flaw. But now a fellow researcher has taken a public guess at what the flaw was. And whether he's right or not, Kaminsky is warning companies to patch their software immediately. Reporter Robert Vamosi joins me in the … Read more

Updated July 24 to fix London walking map

There are some online mapping news tidbits on Tuesday.

First, Google has expanded its walking directions feature from a test for a limited number of users to a public beta covering everywhere that driving directions are available, according to the Google LatLong blog.

For directions that are 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) or less the walking directions option will appear. "We'll try to find you a route that's direct, flat, and uses pedestrian pathways when we know about them," the blog posting says.

You can use Google's … Read more

Update 10:12 a.m. PDT: I changed the headline; Thierry was a long-time, senior programmer but said he wasn't high-ranking.

The programmer who for years helped develop the Google Earth software package has left the search and advertising company.

"I've cut the Google ship loose. Yesterday was my last day at Google," said Wes Thierry on his blog on Thursday. Thierry was a senior engineer for the client software portion of Google Earth, which also taps into data stored on Google servers.

Thierry worked on the project for six years, first at Keyhole then at … Read more

It sure looks like Google Earth, but it's not.

A company called Sentinel, funded by the U.S. Defense Department, has posted a demo of its client software on YouTube that shows the viewer flying through 3D cityscapes with live videos embedded in them.

A higher-quality version is on the Sentinel site.

The software, AVE Video Fusion, "combines Google Earth-like features with live camera videos projected on a 3D model" the video caption says. "This program is NOT Google Earth. It is written from scratch using C++ and OpenGL." It runs on PCs and requires … Read more

Although it has disclosed that 600 of its coffee shops will be closing up shop in the coming months, Starbucks will be unveiling only a small selection of closures per month.

That doesn't mean that you can't check if your favorite coffee watering hole (or office) is going the way of $2 gas. According to The Seattle Times, employees at stores that are facing closure have been given some extra heads-up to either find new jobs or transfer elsewhere.

That extra foresight has led to a special Google Map chronicling which stores will soon be going under, even … Read more

Google Maps is starting to roll out a beta of walking directions in addition to driving directions, the Google Operating System fan blog noticed on Monday.

It looks like it's available to select users in select locations for the time being, and indeed, I can't access it from my Google account yet. It's also unclear whether this will get expanded to the mobile version of Google Maps, where the availability of walking directions would certainly help.

This sort of feature can be very useful in cities with lots of one-way streets, like New York, or with parks … Read more

Summer may be a time for fireworks and barbecues in America, but halfway across the globe there's some serious bicycling under way. To celebrate the Tour de France as well as the recent inclusion of Street View in France proper, Google has created a custom Street View map for tracking the entire race route at eye level.

Along for the ride are some of the newer Street View additions like face blurring and the ground filling technology that stitches multiple images together to get rid of noticeable seams. According to Google's Lat Long blog, the Street View van … Read more

My CNET colleague in New York, Caroline McCarthy, insists there's not a single safe street for bicyclists in New York City. Don't tell that to Ride the City, a mashup for bikers who don't want to end up road kill in the streets of one of the busiest cities in the world.

Like Google Maps, you just plug in your start point and destination and it does the rest. But instead of simply giving you the fastest way there it will map out a route that takes advantage of streets with dedicated bike lanes, and completely avoids … Read more