street view

Germany's privacy regulator has fined Google 145,000 euros ($189,000) after the search giant illegally collected private Wi-Fi network data, including usernames, passwords and Web site results.

It amounts to a minor bluff for Google, but an overall win, as the fine represents about 0.002 percent of its total net profit in 2012.

This is despite it being "one of the biggest data protection rules violations known," according to Hamburg data regulator Johannes Caspar in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg, claiming that Google's "internal control mechanisms must have severely failed."

It's … Read more

If you love road trips -- even ones you take while never leaving your living room -- design agency Teehan+Lax's Labs unit has an intriguing tool: virtual animations of journeys based on Google Street View footage.

The Street View Hyperlapse animator creates interactive hyper-lapse sequences, which are time-lapse sequences with sweeping camera movements.

So if you're virtually driving down the highway in a Street View car, for instance, you can click on an icon and move it around to change the camera angle.

This simple tool eliminates the time-consuming stitching of photos taken from different locations to create a hyper-lapse shot. … Read more

When I hiked Yakushima Island a few years ago, it was the closest thing I'd seen to an alien planet from science fiction.

Famous for its staggering ancient cedar trees, the island off southern Japan has an interior that struck me as a mix of so many imaginary worlds I've seen on film: Endor, Dagobah, Pandora.

An hour into the hike, it began to rain. Biblically. It was coming down cats and dogs, or "earth and sand" as they say in Japanese, and it didn't let up for six hours.

Yakushima then seemed like Venus and its incessant, lethal rain like that in Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man." My Nikon dSLR found itself swimming in an inch of water that got into my pack, and promptly died.

But I couldn't resist the island's enchanting scenery. It's said to have inspired Hayao Miyazaki's acclaimed anime film "Princess Mononoke." … Read more

Apple may be eyeing its own "Street View" type navigation system and one that offers a key benefit over Google's version.

Published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple's "3D Position Tracking for Panoramic Imagery Navigation" patent filing describes a navigation technology that looks and works like Street View. The system would display a panoramic image of a certain location on your mobile device, allowing you to virtually move around the area.

Google's Street View forces you to swipe your finger or tap on a direction icon to journey along … Read more

There's nothing like country music to make you believe that life could be simple again.

So this morning, I was delighted to receive a YouTube video of a band called Gunnar and the Grizzly Boys.

It was headlined: "Redneck Country Band Ambushes Google Street View Car!"

I knew this couldn't possibly be true. I feel sure that Google's Street View drivers, who have to sometimes master rough areas and rocky terrain, must be armed.

Still, the video gave some sort of impersonation of a Street View image populated by, well, this redneck country band and … Read more

Namie-machi was a small bustling city that used to sit near the Fukushima nuclear plant. But on March 11, 2011, that changed. After a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami destroyed the town and the plant's infrastructure, causing hazardous waste to leak into the surrounding land, every single one of Namie-Machi's 21,000 residents had to abandon their homes.

Working with Google Maps and its Street View imagery, the mayor of Namie-machi is now providing the city's previous residents, and anyone else who wants to see, a glimpse of what the town currently looks like.

"Two years … Read more

Google is getting more serious about mapping Canada's north, deploying photographers in winter to map the city of Iqaluit.

As temperatures hit a chilly 8 degrees, walkers equipped with Google's Trekker backpack cameras fanned out across Nunavut's capital, located along Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island.

The effort to image the city of 6,700 marks the first use of the Trekkers in the Canadian north. It's prohibitively expensive to send vehicles there, and some roads are difficult in winter, or nonexistent in summer. … Read more

Today Google released a way to visit the tallest of the Seven Summits without having to hire a sherpa.

The world's biggest mountains are starting to come into view on Google Maps, including Mount Everest, Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, and Mount Elbrus.

"While there's nothing quite like standing on the mountain, with Google Maps you can instantly transport yourself to the top of these peaks and enjoy the sights without all of the avalanches, rock slides, crevasses, and dangers from altitude and weather that mountaineers face," the company said in a blog post.

Google also posted a gallery … Read more

The long-running Google Street View privacy case was settled today, as the company reached an agreement with 37 states and the District of Columbia to stop unauthorized data collection and train its employees on privacy issues.

Google will also pay a $7 million fine to the states involved. The company will also launch a nationwide consumer education campaign, according to the settlement.

The settlement concerns Google's collection of data from unsecured wireless networks nationwide between 2008 and 2010 as part of its Street View mapping service. Google improperly collected and stored information from consumers including email and text messages, … Read more