Results tagged “googlestreetview”

Contrary to what Google Street View indicates, Browns Line doesn’t have a huge gap in it. Although Google has mapped most of the city in 3D, Street View still has a few dark spots, including almost all of the neighbourhoods of Alderwood and Long Branch, an area east of the Greenwood Subway Yards, and a residential neighbourhood southwest of Finch Avenue East and Warden Avenue. We smell conspiracy, and based on the omitted areas, we can only conclude that Google is covering up some sort of secret government plot involving City Councillor Mark Grimes, outdated factories, subways, and 1960s-style bungalows. God help us all.

                                   

Yesterday's launch of Google Street View created a new wave of digital tourism, with most of us starting with our home address and then scouring the mostly anonymous bodies nearby for flickers of recognition. As is par for the course with the service, the camera sometimes captures some unusual, quirky, and mysterious events. Here are some of our local favourites (so far).

At long last, Google Street View has gone live for Toronto as of this morning. We're gonna be perusing the sights today, but if you spot anything great, email it to tips@torontoist.com.

Last Friday at Bloor and Lansdowne, Torontoist reader Caitlin Jane spotted one of Google's Street View cars, caught precariously in the middle of an intersection, as the cars are wont to do. Jane writes: "it was trying to turn right onto Bloor (heading west) and had to wait for the light, then waited for pedestrians, which was how I was able to take such a great picture. Then I waved, haha."

Last Friday, Torontoist visited Google Canada’s headquarters in the Toronto Life Square Complex to discuss Toronto and Google Maps with Mike Pegg, Google Map's product marketing manager and the founder of Google Maps Mania (a blog devoted to Google Maps mashups and tools) and Tamara Micner, Google Canada’s communications officer. For the last few months, Google has remained elusive about its plans for Toronto's Street View, and we were hoping that our meeting might shed some light on its "impending" release. But unfortunately, we couldn’t pry a date out of our hosts. "We want to launch as soon as we can," said Pegg, somewhat ambiguously.

Hey, what do you know—it's Google's Street View car, stuck in traffic! (Lesson learnt, we suppose.) The above photos, captured recently by Torontoist's Nick Kozak, provide a rare close-up of the roof-mounted device used to capture Street View's 360-degree shots, which looks unnervingly like the love-child of Bentham's panopticon and WALL-E.

One of the largest concerns about Google Street View, a concern echoed here now that the search giant continues to collect the photos they need to roll out a comprehensive street-level map of our city, is privacy. What if Google catches you with someone you don't want people to know you were with? What if Google catches you coming out of somewhere you don't want people to know you were inside? Or what if Google catches you in one of your lesser moments: throwing up at the side of the road, say, or, God forbid, appearing to break the law, your image preserved online for all eternity? Sure, faces and licence plates will get automatically blurred out, but that feature has proven a bit dodgy, and someone's face and licence plate aren't the only way to identify them.

Spotted! Again! One of Google's Street View cars! This time by reader Dan Gouge, who sent us the shot above, of a car prowling Leslie and Commissioners Streets at 10:30 this morning, which means that Google isn't resting like we are this holiday Monday. Like the car another reader caught at the start of this month, this one's a Chevy Cobalt sedan, but it's not identical: the first car was green and its license place was BFEM 862; this one's purple and its license plate is BFEM 859. We're sensing a trend.

Google Street View for Toronto will launch "in the coming weeks," according to the Post, who note some of the sightings of the car around the city and who interviewed Jon Lasiuk—the photographer in Torontoist's Flickr Pool whose photo of one of the alleged cars we featured this past weekend. The Star, meanwhile, chronicles all the groups in the city who are planning to "make a visual statement if one of the conspicuous sedans comes driving down the road," such as the Toronto Cyclists Union. The cars themselves? Still (somewhat hilariously and a little unnervingly) elusive. According to the Star, staff reporter (and Fixer) Jack Lakey "spotted one yesterday, but the driver told him he wasn't supposed to talk to media and hurriedly drove off."

Spotted, cruising down the Gardiner Expressway on Thursday, by Torontoist Flickr Pool member Jon Lasiuk: Google's Street View car! Yes, the car that will expose your infidelity, encourage people to steal your stuff, and just in general bring all sorts of misery to your life, simply by showing what the public streets look like, is out and about around the city now. Sort of.