One of the core promises Google has made about its new Street View service is that individual identities are protected, with faces blurred and compromising details removed. If you’re unconvinced, here’s some evidence of sorts: a shot near Kings Cross station in Sydney featuring a completely blurred man with no shirt on. His conversational partner isn’t quite so anonymous (though not easily identified), but topless sunbathers clearly have nothing to fear. [Thanks Kaan!]
As millions of Australians waste time at work checking out everywhere they’ve lived on the newly launched Australia implementation of Google Maps’ Street View, community rating site StreetAdvisor has wasted no time in adding the feature to its service. It’s not immediately obvious, but if you locate a neighbourhood that StreetAdvisor has already rated and click on ‘Browse Map’, you’ll get access to the Street View rendition alongside user comments on that area’s pluses or minuses. [StreetAdvisor]
Street View, Google’s useful/controversial feature with drive-by photography of streets in major cities, is now live in Australia after several months of (presumably) tedious filming. Look for an address in Google Maps and if the area has been recorded, click on the Street View button for a panorama of where you’re trying to get to, or where you live — this is the new ego search). Google has used reportedly blurring technology to ensure faces aren’t visible, though we haven’t encountered any examples yet. But despite the honks from privacy advocates, this is a very useful feature when you’re trying to find an unfamiliar location — visual cues can really help. [Thanks Andrew S!]
Google Maps’ controversial Street View feature has ground-level, 360-degree views of six more cities today: Chicago, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Ore. and Tucson, Ariz. That makes 15 cities total where residents can dodge parking tickets and wait to see the funny/crazy sights around town.
Google Maps Street View [via Chicago Tribune]Bash programmer Jason Hutchinson built a command line download manager called Download Queue (or DQ) based on Lifehacker’s own todo.sh script. In short, you set up a text file called queue.txt, and add the URLs to download one per line, and DQ does the rest, handling filters, automatically continuing broken downloads and more.
Quicksilver’s heretofore elusive creator Nicholas Jitkoff, generally known only as A1c0r, demos Quicksilver at a Google Tech Talk for his employers and co-workers at Google. Aside from providing an exceptionally detailed overview of the ideas behind Quicksilver, it’s also a great guide understanding to the application. If the video whets your appetite, check out our beginner, intermediate, and advanced guides to Quicksilver. While you’re at it, our Quicksilver video extravaganza and time-saving Quicksilver triggers offer some more Quicksilver goodness.
Quicksilver: Universal Access and Action [Google Video via 43 Folders]Microsoft’s Flash competitor Silverlight goes 1.0 today, announces Linux support. Have we got a viable Flash replacement here, or another Microsoft me-too application?
