The world outside your window

Google unveiled its newest feature today: Google Street View. Already launched in a number of places elsewhere in the world, this impressive project today added 25 UK cities to its pages. All you have to do is go to Google Maps, pick a location, click and drag the little orange man to any of the roads outlines in blue, and you can have a nose around.

My initial reaction was astonishment at the sheer scale of the undertaking. Wonderful possibilities popped into my head - checking out what the route to a new place was like before visiting it; giving extra directions to colleagues who were coming to our building for the first time; enhancing my (admittedly rather dormant) London Street Guide.

Once I had got over my excitement at being able to 'wander around' familiar central London locations, on a whim I did a quick search for my house. And it was there. When they said they were including whole cities they really, really meant it.

It's hard not to feel slightly perturbed. I meant - having a visual database of commercial and public buildings is pretty cool. But ordinary residential property? I reckon I could work out to within a couple of weeks when the photo was taken, based simply on the arrangements of cars on our street and the flowers in bloom in our front garden. It seems to me there are many ways in which this could be used for less than positive things. Google Maps' satellite feature has already been exploited by teenagers who used it to work out which houses had swimming pools they could invade. Apart from being a stalker's dream, surely Street View has potential for such pleasantries as identifying places with a lot of expensive cars, checking which properties had burglar alarms or security weaknesses, making assumptions about potential employees' socioeconomic status etc?

Sure, one could glean the same information by actually visiting the places in real life. But this makes it an awful lot easier. Given that the government are sufficiently paranoid that we're supposed to jump at the sight of photographers and mobile phone enthusiasts, it's surprising that the authorities are at ease with this. And how does this sit with point 6 of Google's ten things?

Perhaps this is just the way things will go. The early web was was created by the chosen few. Web 2.0 has been Joe Public's domain. Maybe another volte-face will lead to Web 3.0 consisting of those in the know imparting information about Joe Public? The pace of change in technology is hard to halt. Perhaps the best thing is just to embrace it. So here's a suggestion for the next phased of Google Maps:

Google CCTV.

Because 5 million cameras can't be wrong.

Humorous Interlude

Couple of amusing things I've come across today.

Firstly, via Blogs of Note, I present for your amusement Photoshop Disasters. More laugh-out-loud moments per page than your average blog. (Warning: some nudity. Well, sort of. Or not. You'll see what I mean).

Secondly, cos I haven't quite moved on, Facts about Boris. Personal favourites:

When you wait half an hour for a bus that's supposed to come every five
minutes, and three come along at once, THAT'S BORIS JOHNSON.
Boris Johnson steals odd socks from your washing machine.
Boris Johnson framed Angus Deayton.
Boris Johnson uses the London Underground to blow-dry his hair.
Boris Johnson makes you think you left the gas on.

All very true, I'm sure.

Ginger's Guide to London Streets: Bits and Bobs

The first time I ever spotted one of these little critters was on Tottenham Court Road. Given the plethora of geeky electrical shops around there, I thought it was some kind of officially sanctioned reflection of the consumer bias of the area. It was only when reading Art of the State that I realised that it was actually part of some much larger project; these mosaic space invaders can be found all over the world. Thus far, I've only located two: the red one is on the corner of Bedford Avenue and Tottenham Court Road, the blue one is near the Oxford Street entrance of Tottenham Court Road Tube station - have a look here to see it in situ.

In other news, I was contacted a couple of months ago by a website called Schmap who wanted to use one of the photos from my Flickr photostream for the new edition of their London guide. I happily agreed, but I'm not quite sure what I think of their guides overall. Firstly, the pages have so much on them that they take ages to load on my less-than speedy machine. Secondly, they stuck my photo as part of a gallery above a review of Patisserie Valerie. Which is fine, as that does feature in the photo. But as the review fails to mention they have more than one branch, I thought it was a bit misleading that they listed the address as Brompton Road. I did contact them about this, and eventually they seem to have removed my contribution, although they didn't tell me that they were going to. Ah well, that's my fifteen minutes of fame over!

I would get more sleep...

... if this weren't so very true:


From xkcd

Milestone

Woo! According to sitemeter, my blog has now had over a thousand hits. Some of them were even from other people! Gosh.

Thank you to the individual who did a Google search for 'London Review of Breakfasts' and got this entry. It was your hit that pushed the counter over into four figures. I hope you found my post helpful!

(Not Quite) Any Question Answered

One of the things I love about the internet is the wealth of information so readily available. In fact, it's so easy to find answers to basic factual questions I find myself quite amazed by the questions I still get asked, presumably by those old fashioned types who fancy a conversation with a real person. Tuh!* Under such circumstances it can be very tempting to direct the enquirer to this site (don't click if you're easily offended by rude URLs). What, however, do you do when your answer isn't on Wiki or easily Googleable? Or when net access isn't close to hand? Fortunately there is still a chance for the information-hungry to sate their appetites.

AQA (Any Question Answered) claims to be able to supply an answer to any question you text them (within reasonable boundaries), for a fee of £1 per text. It's pricey enough to deter them from being plagued with stupid questions, but affordable enough if you have a burning desire to find something out that otherwise eludes you.

The first time I used the service was two and a half years ago when I was going into dissertation meltdown and wanted somebody, anybody to help me figure out what to do with my data (I had been abandoned by my supervisor and books didn't seem to be helping.) The reply I got was probably sensible, but I was too brain-addled to really apply it. I haven't been in a situation where I've so desperately needed otherwise unobtainable information since then. But I thought of them today for some reason and decided to give them another try.

What to ask, though? Had to be something worth asking. And then I remembered a question that occurred to me a few months ago, to which I have yet to find a satisfactory answer. Having read 'A Tale of Two Cities' and 'Mrs Dalloway' in quite close succession, I was left pondering, why do some books have the phrase 'The End' at the end of them?** Surely it's obvious that it's 'The End', and the intelligent reader doesn't need to be told? Some theories Mrs Mc and I have come up with include:

• It's a leftover from when novels were serialised in periodicals, before being published as books. Many of Dickens's works appeared in this way. Thus 'The End' would denote that this was the final installment of the story.
• Something to do with the way books were produced on a printing press, to signal where the last page occurred.
• A way of signifying the end of a lengthy text split over several scrolls.
• A reflection of some custom that may exist in oral traditions of story-telling.

All plausible, but no easy way to find out if any of them are correct. So I sent the following message to AQA in the hope my query would be resolved:

When/where/why did the practice of writing 'The End' at the finish of a book commence?

About half an hour later a reply came through. Wahey! Now more wondering. Oh, but:

Sorry, AQA can't find why and when writing "The End" in books became standard. The printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1436

Gagh! Might be asking for a refund.

*I am, of course, joking. I can be sociable sometimes. And I do rather like playing information-detective for other people. I just don't like to be beaten by elusive facts!
**Spare me the smart alec remarks about putting 'The End' at the beginning being a stupid idea. ;-)

Leaving Footprints in Cyberspace

Our forefathers would probably be rather unsettled by the idea of leaving a record of their presence on every book they picked up in a public library. Even more so if the time, location and duration of their perusal was recorded. Yet in a country with in excess of 4 million CCTV cameras, their ancestors would probably consider this a fairly benign form of monitoring. Probably just as well, given that this is pretty much what happens when you browse the internet. The sites you visit can be detected, leaving a trail of footprints as you go on a cyber-spacewalk. Scary and impressive.

I have a 'Site Meter' tracker on this blog that not only acts as a hit counter, but also tells me when it is visited, for how long, and from what other sites people are referred in order to get here. Don't worry - I don't use it for nefarious means. I'm just a nosey soul. From looking at it I can tell you that I have a few 'regular' readers who I don't think I actually know in any way. This surprises me - I rather assumed that anyone who came here more than once would be someone I actually knew 'in real life' or at the very least had 'encountered' somewhere on the web. Let's face it - this is hardly the most cutting edge of blogs. But there are regulars from areas where I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone at all, which is a pleasant surprise. I hope you enjoy reading, whoever you are.

I can also tell you that my London street guide attracts a number of hits from people who have done searches looking for specific information about London and had the misfortune to come across my ramblings instead. Ah well. I accept no responsibility for any time wasted! I can additionally report that the single most frequent reason for referral to my blog is following a Google search like this, which sends you to this blog entry. Nice to know my carefully chosen words are what pulls the readers in then.

People may feel that this kind of monitoring is a form of spying, and no doubt there are certain organisations who take a very keen interest in the internet usage of some individuals. But sometimes the tables can be turned. This story was an interesting example of that: turns out the CIA have been fiddling around with Wikipedia entries, and it hasn't gone unnoticed. Nor has the Vatican's contributions. You would have thought that the former would know better than to think that their modifications wouldn't be detected. Are these people really key-players in global security?

Let the Memory Live Again...

Ooh. The Museum of London (to which I pay unreasonably little attention considering I'm a Londonophile) has launched a new project: Map My London. The idea is to 'map' your emotional experiences of London, categorised into a number of themes: Love and Loss, Fate and Coincidence, Beauty and Horror, Joy and Struggle, Friendship and Solitude and What Else?

It's a fascinating idea, and it will be interesting to see how it develops. I don't know how long they're planning to keep it open. I'm not entirely convinced that the site is wonderfully designed. It's quite hard to get a nice neat summary of what it's all about from the home page with its random windows popping up. Londonist do a better summary (once you get past the fanciful intro!) and I found a text-only page on the Map My London site which is a little easier to read.

Right, off to check what other people's experiences of my favourite haunts are...