Google Street View in the clear

Following protests and complaints over the introduction of Google's Street View technology in the UK, the UK's Information Commissioner has today ruled that it should not be stopped.

A spokesman for the privacy watchdog said removing the entire service would be "disproportionate to the relatively small risk of privacy detriment".

More from BBC News.

Residents complain over Google street view cameras

Another story from BBC News today on the privacy issues surrounding Google's Street View technology - residents of Broughton, near Milton Keynes, staged a protest and accused Google of invading their privacy and facilitating crime.

Twenty five UK cities went live on 19th March with the Netherlands version also going live on the same date, making a total of nine countries now covered.

Google Latitude launches

Google launched it's own Fire Eagle today, enabling you to 'See your friends on a map and get in touch'.

I haven't had enough time to get properly stuck in but from first viewing the Google Latitude user experience is more map-based and the 'sales pitch' is much more end-user focused.

Whilst all the hype around Fire Eagle was it's ability to be the 'glue' between applications, storing, retrieving and passing on location information, Google Latitude seems to be promoted as an application that will directly help you organise your real world existence by knowing if your friends are nearby, if your parents' flight arrived safely, and so on.

They are essentially the same thing in a different package.

I guess the next technological breakthrough will be a device, small enough to put in your pocket, that will include an audio speaker and receiver set such that, upon entry of a particular numeric code, you will be able to converse directly, one-to-one, with anyone else with a similar device.

Then you could find out, not only if your friends are nearby and if that flight arrived safely, but how everyone is feeling, whether they saw the game last night, and if anyone fancies a beer?
Oh, hang on... (photo: Olib)

From a business point of view it makes a great deal of sense for Google to be pushing heavily into this area.

If the great Google machine knows the whereabouts of you and your friends, and builds an understanding of your travelling habits, then, together with all of the other information Google already knows about each one of us, just imagine the kind of powerful, relevant advertising model that could be created for each individual.

Putting sarcasm and cynicism aside for one moment, my major tech prediction for 2009 was thus:

"Determining your present location will become a seamless and automatic feature on mobile devices, enabling some breakthrough location based services to achieve widespread popularity."

Google Latitude is yet another step in the right direction, although they might want to launch an iPhone version fairly soon.

For more information, here is Google's introductory video explaining their new service:

Going for a run?

This morning I ran 6.6306 miles. The first mile was very much downhill but the 6th mile was a very steep uphill climb. During the run I burnt 937 calories*.

This is all good news**. What is even better news is that I know all of this information without having spent a single penny on a fancy new running watch with built-in GPS.

I know all of this because afterwards I plotted my run on the Gmap Pedometer, a very simple Google Maps based application that provides all the information above and more, and lets you save your run to a unique URL for future reference.

View a larger screenshot of my run for better detail.



My struggles with bending fiddly pieces of string along faded roads on badly folded, torn-but-sellotaped paper maps are well in the past and for the last 6 months or so this website has become invaluable.

A shining example of a well-executed, simple but extremely effective tool that delivers exactly what is required.

Although it does mean I can no longer pretend that I've run further than I actually have!

* I don't believe that I did burn 937 calories. More to the point, I've really no idea how many calories I did burn but I do know that the Gmaps Pedometer has no clue how fast I completed my 6.6306 miles, it only knows my body weight and distance completed.

Maybe a combination of distance, body weight and time would allow a more accurate calorie calculation but for all this website knows, I could have gone for a gentle stroll this morning ( I promise it wasn't a gentle stroll!).

** It is particularly good news as I am training to run two half-marathons in one week in October and raising money for the British Heart Foundation - feel free to sponsor me if you wish.

Google maps gone wrong?

Google Maps is now exclusively using TeleAtlas as it's mapping data provider, dropping all previous information supplied from NavTeq.

This appears to have resulted in a noticeable increase in errors according to reports from The Map Room and The Earth is Square.

The Google mobile phone has arrived

The G1 phone has today been officially unveiled in the United States and Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were present at the launch.


Essentially a 3G phone that has been optimised for Google services like mail and maps it is available on the T-Mobile network and requires signing up for a two-year contract.

The phone will reportedly be free to UK buyers on a £40 monthly data plan and should be available from early November.

In a significant competitive move against Apple's iPhone, Amazon has confirmed that it has created a music retail application for the G1 that will let users search, buy, download and play music from the Amazon store - a catalogue of 6m songs from all four major labels.

Whilst first glance might suggest the G1 is a just less pretty version of the iPhone don't forget this is Google and they tend to get things right quite often.

It is the first mobile device to use the Android operating system which is effectively open source, meaning any developer can build apps for the phone and a Facebook style model is used to promote the most popular / highly rated apps.

The device also includes a QWERTY keyboard which is presumably intended to encourage blackberry and heavy mail users to switch to this device.

For Google's sake, let's hope the UK launch won't see a repeat of the problems that plagued the UK iPhone launch.

I spotted a Google Street View car...

... and, like Jon, I found it strangely quite exciting!



The sight of seeing the car driving through the streets of Birmingham did make me ponder one question which I hadn't really considered before.

With the increased awareness these days around climate change and the damage we are doing to the natural world, are Google doing anything to offset the environmental damage caused from driving cars around every street in all the major cities in the United States and Europe... and presumably, one day, a large portion of the world?

A quick search of the Street View pages on Google don't provide any clues to the answer... can anyone shed any more light on this I wonder?